[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Delthefunky

I'm a locomotive "engineer", and I pretty much agree with the engineer title being unnecessary. I think it stems from the old days when there was a giant boiler and furnace attached. Back then would have required a good amount of knowledge about pressures and volumes etc -- maybe like a modern power engineer would learn to operate boilers.

As for education required, you don't need anything more than a high school diploma. My terminal hasn't stopped hiring for 10 years, and they have job fairs where they hire people off the street every few months. The Sait/Nait courses are a complete waste of time and money, as they put everyone through a 3 month conductor training course of their own. Surprisingly there is a lot to learn about how railways operate, and there's way more to it than I ever expected before I started working there. There's lots of rules that you question why they exist, and then you experience accidents where someone didn't follow the rules, and you understand why.

For driving a train, you could definitely learn what the important controls do in 5 minutes. But you won't have much success getting anywhere safely. The engineer training program is about 6 months long, and has some moderately challenging concepts to learn. You have to have been a conductor for at least 2 years.

Starting pay for a conductor is likely around $80-$100k depending on where you hire on. But I know plenty of conductors who make $130k. Engineers make $130-$160k.

After 7 years, out of 20 people I hired on with there's only myself and one other person. Everyone else has quit, and it's because of the hours, lifestyle, and the way the company treats everyone. So it's not a hard job in a physical way, but it's not for everyone though.

For the most part I really like it though, I get to see the best scenery and animals, I basically get every other day off, and I probably have as good job security as anywhere.

You need to start a separate thread where we can pepper you with questions about your job. It sounds fascinating.