It’s a dangerous world out here
I heard from a reader who’d recently become a railroader. A camera tot’n railfan (as I had once been) — and a very good one, at that. My first response was to congratulate him. My next impulse was to offer a heartfelt warning. “Whatever you do, be careful. It’s dangerous out there.”
“Safety First, Always.” It’s the way we live — not merely a cliched expression. Without constant vigilance and situational awareness, too often, it’s the primary reason railroaders suffer injury or death.
I gave up counting the number of times I was hurt performing my job, both as a rookie brakeman, and later as an engineer. My “higher education” in the art of railroading consisted of five [non-paid] days, being tutored by men who’d spent the better part of their lives jumping up and down off moving equipment, walking the top of boxcars in the pouring rain, or riding the end platform of a yard engine.
Many lacked fingers or walked with a limp, and if they survived, died far too early from the physical abuse a railroader’s body takes. They were lifers. It took 25 years of seniority to hold a morning yard job at Brown Street Yard on the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad in Richmond, where I made my first day. These men watched over me, thank goodness.
My young friend will spend a couple of weeks billeted in a dormitory at a training facility in Georgia. He’ll be taught the “do’s and don’ts” inside a sterile air-conditioned classroom, as well as getting his hands-on experience in a rail yard, devoid of discarded brake shoes, spikes, and burst air hoses, over which to trip and fall — as I did.
No, that will come when he “marks up” as a working railroader and enters the real world.
Due to the game of catch-up hiring being played out on America’s railroads, with the sudden uptick in business, after the downturn in employment because of Covid, he’ll get his initiation into the brotherhood of the steel rail from people with little more experience than he has. That scares me. Whereas I was part of a crew of four or five, sharing duties in a manageable routine, he’ll be half of a party of two — having to do the work formerly performed by several others. Pressure is also being exerted by the railroad to get the job done as quickly as possible to be competitive and profitable.
Among my mementos, I have scars on my face from a locomotive crankcase explosion that nearly killed me. I suffer from arthritis from a flailing air hose that wrapped around my wrist. I was dragged over crossties after falling off a boxcar. There is no concerted effort to work carelessly, but today’s railroads (like most businesses) rely on a combination of statistics and pure blind luck — then roll the dice.
Unfortunately, the consequences of making bad bets in our industry can be, and usually are, devastating.
Check out the previous column, “From the Cab: Amtrak’s ‘Hilltopper'” from retired Amtrak Engineer Doug Riddell.
