Playing the Game on Amtrak

As I reread the above it sounds a bit demeaning to engineers. That is not what I intended. I would hasten to add that a good crew functions as a team with everyone doing their part. Being on good terms with my engineer has saved my bacon more than once. In freight service it is the engineer who breaks in a new employee. The conductor will send a new man up to ride on the engine and leave him there until he has learned everything he can from the engineer. Only then will the conductor bring him down on the ground to learn the ins and outs of being a brakeman. A good conductor will have a thorough understanding of what the engineer is doing at all times, up there on the engine. 

Likewise, a good engineer will be alert to what is transpiring on the ground. With the advent of radios, some engineers were tempted to get a tad lax in the 'alert and watching' department. It was too easy to just keep an ear to the radio and not really pay too much attention out the window, where the work is happening. One fellow in particular liked to catch up on his reading while we were switching. Since I prefer to stay off the radio and use hand signs, this was occasionally a problem if I would get out of sight of the engine and be forced to use the radio.

When that happened, my engineer would go back to his reading. A situation like this might occur while working on a curve, let's say. As the engine came back into sight I would observe this character with his nose buried in the paper. This happened one day as we were about to add a handful of cars to some already on a track. As the engine came into view there were maybe five carlengths to the joint, or coupling. I began giving the handsign to 'ease up', or slowdown. Since he wasn't looking, the movement didn't slow down, as might be expected since no one but me was aware that any signals were being given.

Gauging the speed, I deduced that the impact wouldn't derail anything, kill anybody, or knock my engineer onto the floor, since both knuckles were aligned and open. 'Crossed drawbars' have caused many a derailment. I knew it would get his attention, though. I began giving the sign to 'ease up some more', and then the sign to STOP. What if my radio had failed? Radio failure was not an unheard of occurrence, by any stretch. When things still weren't slowing up any, I gave the 'washout' sign - emergency stop. I was still flapping my arms with enthusiasm when we tied onto the standing cars. The crash could be heard all over the yard. I saw the newspaper fly into the air as my frantic engineer dumped the air and put our cut of cars into emergency. Too late to do any good, of course. I walked slowly up to the engine.

"What the fuck happened?" asked he. "You tied on a little hard, I think." said I.

"Why didn't you say something?" asked he. "Radio must've quit - I was washing you out like crazy, didn't you see me?"

"Uh, see you? Uh, I guess not."

I never had much problem with attentiveness after that. After it happened a few times to a few different engineers, word got around - 'Keep an eye on Smock, or he'll run your ass into a cut of cars!'

The last time I had a student attached to my job was in the Chicago yards. With 25 odd years of seniority I was able to hold a rather high-paying job. I.e. spend 65 or 70 hours a week on the property, the only way to make any real money as a Conductor, since all Conductors earn the same hourly rate. The job can pay well, but as we've always said, it's blood money. I was on a pinup crew, which consists of just a conductor and an engineer. Since it takes about 20 years to hold one of these jobs I really didn’t understand what good it would do a student to work with me? It was work he wouldn’t be able to do for quite some time.

Nonetheless, we (the student and I) decided to make the best of it. Rather than concentrate on the specifics of the particular job I was then working we would instead dwell on the ‘theory of railroading’ as it has developed over the last hundred and twenty-five years. This is a subject I have begun to touch on once or twice before, and look forward to exploring here, in a bit more detail. The crux of the issue is this: although we are paid by the hour and guaranteed an eight-hour day through union agreements—we never work eight hours.

How could this be?

It came about this way; the actual nuts and bolts of railroading haven’t changed much since the first steam engine ran on its narrow gauge tracks pulling a handful of wooden axled buggies. The engines, tracks and cars have gotten bigger, wider and fancier. The crew has shrunk from six or seven people down to two or three. But the railroading part is still the same - a person in authority gives the conductor the work. A yardmaster, trainmaster, or superintendent may give work to a conductor by voice, radio or switch list. The conductor decides how best to get these tasks accomplished. A conductor with any seniority makes more per year than a yardmaster, trainmaster, or most superintendents.

In freight service (which is where it all began) the yardmaster would usually be able to present you with the work he needed your crew to accomplish that day as soon as you showed up for duty. Then the conductor would go over the work with the rest of the crew and try to make a decision. What you’re trying to decide is: how long will it take to do this work? If it looks like it’s going to take more than four or five hours then you tell the yardmaster, "Yes, we can get this, but it looks like overtime." The yardmaster has to decide if he wants to pay overtime to get this work done (which will equate to four hours at time and a half) or take some of the work back? Although this could now go either way, one of those two things will occur. The yardmaster will either shift some of your work to another crew or allow your crew to do all the work regardless of how long it takes. Why is this, you might wonder?

Train and engine service employees are bound by what is known as the Hours of Service Laws. These are Federal regulations that decree how long a railroad crew may remain on duty. Currently this time limit is 12 hours. After twelve hours, the crew ‘Expires for Time’. They die. A dead crew is not allowed to perform any service, though they are still getting paid, of course. When I first hired out we were allowed to work 14 hours and not long before that it was 16 hours. In those days a crew deciding on overtime was deciding if they were going home in five or six hours (or less, and getting paid for eight) or staying around for up to 16, the last eight at time and a half. It was and is a big decision. If times were good and the railroad had enough money most jobs (at least half anyway) were overtime jobs. And that is where you might find the fellows with seniority. The jobs that were not overtime are known as ‘quit’ jobs, standing for early quit, the term used to describe ‘calling it a day’ after five or so hours and getting paid for eight.

One would think that management would insist on eight hours work for eight hours pay? Believe it when I say, they have tried. However, with one yard master and one train master per shift and perhaps 5 to 20 crews it is simply impossible to monitor everybody all the time.

What does this mean? It means that if one ran across a new yardmaster (trainmaster, etc.) that wouldn't, couldn't or didn't know how to play the game, then you had an opportunity to educate said individual. If you came to realize that the fellow giving you your work wasn't flexible then you merely nodded, took whatever work he deemed it appropriate to lay on you, gathered up your crew and went out the door. And proceeded to work safely.

'Work safely' is a euphemism for throwing out the anchor, which might be described as: working at a greatly reduced speed. After a few hours the yardmaster begins to realize: he has a crew out there, but they don't seem to be getting anything done? And he might then call the trainmaster, and the trainmaster might come on down and walk right with you as you go about your railroad duties. He would see immediately, or if not immediately, sooner or later, that although your feet are moving, the work isn't getting accomplished.

Can he do anything about it? No. Of course not, because you are 'working safely'.

Railroaders are blessed (and always have been) by more and various rules than you might shake a stick at, as the saying goes. This is because railroading is a very dangerous business - heavy machinery, and all that - and folks have always been getting injured and killed doing it, and each time that happened the powers that be added another rule to cover the sad situation that caused injury or loss of life. This has been going on for so long that nowadays that rule book is an inch and a half thick in very small print, and we carry it in our pockets or grips at all times.

A few examples should suffice. The very first rule is, work safely. If you are ever hurt at work you are in immediate violation of rule number one. As mentioned, there is a rule for everything. All a conductor needs to know is the rules, and the rest is easy. Say you tie onto a cut of cars and give the engineer a 'go ahead', the signal to start pulling on them. Wait a second or two, then swing down (stop) the move. If asked what the problem might be, the answer is; the cars seem to be pulling a little hard - time to inspect the track. And inspect the equipment, it could be a car with a sticking brake? Maybe one of the cars has fallen off the rail? Pulling a car that's 'on the ground' or 'in the mud' can ruin miles of perfectly good track, and adjoining tracks and equipment as well. It has happened before, more than once, and that's why there is a rule in the book that says: if the cars are pulling hard, check everything. The engineer knows how to play this game, too. He might advise, 'the air isn't coming up'. Or it might be he that says the cars are pulling hard. Teamwork.

This can go on and on, (in a hundred different forms) and will, for days if necessary, until things change and everyone knows how to play the game.

A fellow came into Chicago once, new to railroading but a swell 'hatchet man' in another branch of the transportation industry. I'm here to cut jobs, was how he introduced himself. It didn't take him long to notice that some crews were leaving early. (The overtime jobs work at their own pace, to begin with, so they didn't come under his scrutiny, right away). He asked, 'Where are those fellows going?'

Well, they're done with their work, so they're going home. "WHAT!? Well, we'll put a stop to that!" And he put out a memo (as has been done many times over the years, whenever a new but unknowing 'Boss' comes along) - 'NO QUITS'.

The various crews began to 'work safely'.

Trains began to go late.

A few weeks of this, and headquarters wanted to know - What's the problem there in Chicago? Well, so and so took away the quits. As I mentioned, this has been going on the same way for over a hundred years, and those folks that run railroads know how to play the game. Well, tell so and so to stop fucking with Labor and get the damn trains out on time! Things went back to normal.

Once this hatchet man began to understand the game, he sat down with each crew and bargained with them - If you do this and this and this - then you can go home - no matter what time it is. The crews jumped on it, and we had a few jobs that knocked out the RIP track in about two hours and hit the parking lot. This poor fellow had a lot to learn about railroading. It had been taking the rip job eight or ten hours to do the same work, only a few days earlier.

I took my new guy, and we looked at the work. 'Today, we'll just get right on this, like normal', said I. And we did, and we went home early. The next day I suggested that we 'work safely', and did the same work. What we had accomplished the day before in less than five hours wasn't even part way done after eight, working safely. Tracks were walked. Air hoses were uncoupled by hand (per the rules). Each move was stopped 'in the clear', a useless rule that was stuck in after cars left 'in the foul' were cornered, once, a long time ago. Switches were inspected, and maintainers were called if they needed oil. Drawbars that wouldn't shift easily (move to center) were left until the RIP track could send someone out to grease them. I could go on, but perhaps you get the idea? We worked a bit of overtime on general principles, and then called it a day. We followed the rules. We worked safely.

'Quits' work because everybody gets what they want. The yardmaster gets his cars switched, trains made up, etc. The crew does what would take over eight hours if they followed the Company's own Rules, in less than eight hours by moving along smartly - and gets to go home to their friends and loved ones.

Over the years, lawsuits and claims against the company by employees that were injured doing their jobs have been costly to the railroads. To try and stem this tide, more rules have been added. The company has used this fact of injuries to try and outlaw Quits, the idea being that working fast (to get the quit) was causing these injuries. Nothing could be farther from the truth. A crew that is concentrating on their work, is a crew that is paying attention. Paying attention equates to less injuries.

One need only check the statistics to see that there are far more injuries on the overtime jobs, where the crews are in no hurry because they know they are going to be there all day. It is crews in the 'Working Safely' mode that are prone to inattentiveness, and injury.

None the less, more and more rules have been added to the existing rules, none of which can be enforced in the first place, for the same reason that 'Working Safely' can't be stopped. You can't put a manager with every crew, and it wouldn't do any good if you could. One must remember that the idea behind these rules isn't to provide sensible guidelines about how best to perform ones job. It's to give the Company an out in the event of an injury and potential lawsuit. The rules are in place so that the Company can say, 'Well, he wouldn't have been injured if he had followed the Rules.' And then, hopefully, avoid having to settle a lawsuit. Except, that doesn't work either. Juries have invariably awarded huge sums to injured employees, broken Rules or not.

I've given this matter a lot of thought over the years - How to make railroading any safer? The company claims that this is a First Priority, when we all know that making money is, or should be, the main focus of any business. And over the years, every meaningful suggestion to make the work, or the equipment any safer, has been consistently ignored, to the point of ludicrousness. Safety Departments have been created, tons of money spent on Safety Awareness - but this is merely to make it look like the Company has made an effort when it's time to go to Court. Very little is spent where it might do any good, like on the ground, or on the equipment - say, adding handrails and grabirons.

The latest Bombardier coaches were delivered with an single vertical grabiron (much harder to hold onto when riding the side of the car, than say two horizontal bars, one above the other) and an offset foot rung.

It might be interesting to note that the same problem existed on the Amfleet I and II series, (at least the foot rung was directly beneath the grab iron) and was never addressed THERE, either. The hapless trainman trying to hang onto this arrangement AND his lantern AND his radio is a sight to see, flopping around out there like a flag in a stiff breeze. Repeated complaints and requests for a safer arrangement over a five year period yielded exactly NADA. This is but one of many, many examples, which I see no point in exploring any further for the purpose of this narrative, which is to address the Theory of Railroading, and the idea of early quits.

Also in Chicago, it came to pass that a young lady I knew was studying for a transportation degree. In fact, she was to go on and become the first woman Yardmaster in Amtrak (if not railroad) history.

Edit - Oct. 18, 2004 - I am reminded that there have in fact been several women yardmasters in freight service, going back nearly twenty five years. It was only Amtrak, that had never utilized a female yardmaster.

She was a very fine yardmaster, after the initial 'breaking in' phase.

I happened to be dating this woman during that awkward period. She was the afternoon yardmaster, I was a Conductor on one of the afternoon shift yard jobs.

Although her college Transportation classes had given her a lot of background and other useful tools to be a good yardmaster, it didn't prepare her for how to play the game. In her world, it had always been eight hours work for eight hours pay. She felt strongly that if she had to work eight hours, by golly, so were the crews.

Over several meaningful dinners and evenings, we discussed this issue. I tried to explain about the History and Theory of Railroading, etc. To no avail.

In freight service, it is true that a yardmaster has it a bit easier when it comes to figuring what work needs to be done over the course of a shift. And therefore finds it easier to assign the work. In Amtrak service, things in the yard are a lot more fluid. Mainly because there are a lot more things that can go wrong with the equipment, at the last minute. Therefore it is harder to sit down with the crews and figure out ahead of time what needs to be done over the next few hours. So, the game must be played a bit differently.

In Amtrak yard service the crews for a given shift sit in a 'ready' type room (the shanty), awaiting the next chore, called a 'move'. The yardmaster might be informed that a certain car on a certain track has just been 'bad ordered', or taken out of service. Now a replacement car must be located, the offending car removed, and the train put back together. A call will come to the shanty, to so and so crew's conductor - Hey, I got a move for you.

The closer to Train Time that a car must be switched out (replaced) the more need exists to get it done promptly, to avoid a 'Late Train'. Late trains are every yardmaster's nemesis.

It is a fact of life that not everyone works at the same pace, or with the same gusto, if you will. Especially if there is no incentive. Quits are a big incentive, but they are hard to come by at Amtrak, because of the aforementioned last minute changes, etc. Which is to say, it's just harder to play the game. It can be done, however, if one is so inclined. Over the last few years, fewer guys want to play, which is sad. They would rather sit in the shanty, play cards, and have no motivation whatsoever to do much else. When the 'HOT' move comes down the pike, they take their sweet time getting out of the shanty and onto their engine. Take their sweet time digging out the cars, and take their sweet time putting the track back together. I've seen yardmasters send out TWO crews, one to cut out the bad order while the other digs up the replacement. The idea is to speed up the move. The two crews don't communicate and succeed only in getting in each other's way. One crew on the ball would get it done much quicker.

So. Suppose you are a yardmaster, and you get a last minute bad order that must be switched out NOW to avoid a late train. You have five crews sitting downstairs. Four of them are slugs. One, you know from experience, will hustle out there and give you the good move you need to avoid a late train. Who are you going to call?

What does this mean? It means that slug crews are rewarded by getting more time to sit in the shanty playing cards. It means that the crew which performs, will get overworked. Apathy is rewarded on Amtrak. Or, could be, if no one plays the game. I've had conductors look me in the eye and say, 'I get paid the same as a GOOD conductor!'

That's where they're wrong.

Since it's hard to get a good quit on Amtrak, due to the last minute nature of the work, the biggest incentive management has to offer is money. This can be doled out in exchange for good work and HOT moves in several ways. Overtime is the easiest and always popular.

As mentioned earlier, however, seniority gravitates to jobs that make overtime. Say you're on Job four. You're performing in return for overtime. Word gets out - Job four is a money maker. Next thing you know, you're bumped off Job four by a guy with more seniority. Now you bump to job five, and if you're any good at playing the game, you take the overtime with you. Using this tactic resulted in 'designated overtime' jobs in the Chicago Terminal. Older heads HATED it that a younger guy was getting the O.T., and bitched to the Union, which bitched to Management to allow the guys with seniority to have first crack at overtime. So the 'designated overtime' jobs were set up and advertised for bid, and the old heads jumped on them.

This was a piss poor arrangement for the company. Now they had to pay overtime to guys that were slugs, and still reward a 'go to' crew to use in a pinch.

Another method of reward is to 'tack it on the end'. In other words, take whatever quit you can, and tack a couple overtime hours onto your timesheet, which the yardmaster has to (and does) verify. This is another reason why transportation employees have never had to punch a time clock. And even if they did, there are always ways to get around it, if you can play the game.

Another reward method is to 'stash' a good crew in a desirable place, until they're needed. In Chicago, this meant leaving your 'go to' crew hanging around Union Station. Plenty of distractions, good food, etc. It requires a certain degree of cooperation between the crew and the yardmaster, in that no information is exchanged over the radio - that would give everything away. The conductor knows ahead of time what's going on, and periodically calls on the phone to check in, and see if the crew might be needed?

A good crew can be left alone for a good deal of time, in exchange for showing some alacrity when the yardmaster gets in a bind. There are any number of ways that the game might be played.

Since two and three hour quits are a rarity on Amtrak (but by no means unheard of) a new animal has reared its ugly head. The 'one more move' syndrome. A yardmaster might give a crew a move near the end of the shift, thinking it will take 'X' amount of time. Near the end of the shift, even a slug Conductor will ask, 'Is this going to be it?' The slug crew, thinking they are wrapping things up, gets right on it and lo and behold - the move that the yardmaster figured would take them ninety minutes (because it would normally) is done in about fifteen! That's where the 'one more move' comes in.

The crew hears their Job being called on the radio - Hey, Job three - I got one more move for ya'. They reluctantly make the one more move, only to hear - Hey, fellas, I got one more move.

This can go on and on. It does not breed feelings of mutual respect and admiration.

In conversations with the new lady yardmaster, she allowed as how she knew a way to get her crews to give eight hours work. She had discovered the one more move ploy. I advised her not to try it with my crew. 'Why not', she wanted to know? 'What can you do then? I've got the stick, at that point'. She just didn't get it.

To be fair, I told her that if she wanted to play like that, it would erode relations with the crews, and she'd be hard pressed to get anyone to perform when the time came, as it inevitably would, that she needed her fat pulled out of the fire. She allowed as how she would schedule her moves so there would be plenty of time for even the sluggiest crew to get it done. OK, said I. Sometimes, experience is the best teacher.

The next night, about the time my crew was usually about done, she called down with a hot move. I had already warned the fellows that this might happen. She was going to try her new technique on her boyfriend, first, to set the precedent. We went ahead with the move, not really pushing too hard, but we did it. She tried to 'one more move' us, and we went directly to 'work safely' mode.

After a certain amount of time had passed - more than enough to accomplish the move under ordinary circumstances, over the radio comes, 'Ah, CD Seven (the yardmaster's radio designation, CD for clerk/driver) Job Two, where are you guys?'

'Job Two, CD seven, we're over here on storage four, digging out that car you wanted.'

'You guys having any problems?'

'Nothing we can't handle. I'll give you a call if we need the diesel pit out here.'

Meanwhile, the clock winds down, and now we're making overtime. And, of course, we are not a designated overtime time job, so this is not good - for CD Seven.

Awhile later, 'Job Two, Ah, give me a call.' 'Roger, CD Seven.'

Find a phone, in no particular hurry. Call my girlfriend. She's ballistic. 'You're fucking me! You know it doesn't take this long to dig out a car! What are you trying to pull?'

'Not pulling anything. We're having some problems. The engine's in emergency, we can't get the air. We're trying to reset the WAB 26 brake valve.'

'You know that's a damn lie!'

'Yeah, but you don't. Is this gonna' be it, now? Want us to come in and call it a day, or keep trying to get that car?'

I will say that within a very short time span, she learned how to play the game. She learned which crews were slugs and could only be relied upon to move at the slowest possible speeds at all times, and which crews she might actually call on in a pinch. She learned how to reward the good and punish the bad. It has to be like that, don't you think?

At any rate, it has been like that, for over one hundred and twenty five years.