Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF Engineers Earnings

Just wondering how much BNSF engineers make a year, does the pay go up the more seniority you have?

The only thing seniority changes, are the CHOICES of jobs that you can hold. On MY district ALL engineers make the same pay for each job worked. There is a little difference as pre '85 dates get a few what we call "arbitraries" that post '85's do not get, but that is too complicated to go into. The pay can vary from $40,000 to well over $100,000 a year depending on the job conditions you are willing, or able, to tolerate.
JB

Hey 3rdswitch - for the benefit of this teenager MN_Guy, can you tell him how many hours a week a RR eng/cond works on the average(including time in vans going home) to earn the 40-100k you list? I'd be willing to bet it's more than 40 hrs a week? My guess is it translates to a not so good hourly wage in comparison to a lot of jobs..

Ok, I am not one of the rails, but if you want to do this for the money...you will be disappointed, as with any career.

Most engineers, conductors, and brakeman work 12 hours a day, and at least 6 days a week. As posted earlier, some of the UP guys worked every day for 90 days straight...not my idea of fun. Money will not matter to you anyway, because when will you be home and awake to spend it? I was told by multiple Conrail guys that you have to start out as a brakeman, and work your way up...it all depends on where you hire out of as far as how fast you will move up (I.E. are the majority of engineers young or old?).

I would suggest trying to get into a job shadow thing if possible, and live the life for a month or two. If you like it, ok, but if you don't then you know. Remember, most railroads will charge you for the training you recieve if you quit inside of a year.

Hope this helps some

J.Gontero

One thing I'd like to point out when we're talking about "hours worked" is that pool freight assignments (i.e., freight trains going from Point A to Point B, laying over, then returning to Point A) can consume anywhere from 12 hours to several days away from home. Not all of this time will be compensated.

Plus, it's entirely possible to be called on duty at your Home Terminal with as little as 8 or 10 hours off since you arrived back home. Time off duty at your Home Terminal is not compensated, even though you might be sittin' by the phone "First Out" for hours.

My point is that "Dollars-per-hour" may be somewhat misleading when it comes to railroad employment. It's generally necessary to work (or be available to work) nearly constantly if you wanna make the Big Bucks, until you slowly gain enough seniority to hold higher paying and/or more desirable assignments.

In frt. pool work on a 450 mile KC-Wellington round trip, a pre-1985 man will average about 26-36 hrs for a RT (sometimes more, sometimes less), and about that same anount of time OFF between trips AT HOME, for about 85k per year.

It depends on MANY things. For example, some jobs are GUARANTEED a certain amount of miles the moment you report to work (a job I recently worked paid $325 a day and I went home in less than 4 hours, you do the math) The LOWEST paying jobs are yard jobs. I think they pay 175 a day. (ALL RR jobs are a full day pay, never 1/2 day) So if you go to work at 0715 and go home at 1515 with 8 hours on duty you make a minimum of $21.87 hr, it is actually a little more because unlike "normal" jobs, you got a 1 hour lunch break in the middle of the 8 and only worked 7. More and more the RR's are putting "guartantees" on the extra boards. I think our engineers extra board is guaranteed $2600 a half IF you stay AVAILABLE the entire 11 days (we recently started a work 11/off 4 day half) regardless of how many days you actually work, of course IF you actually make more than $2600 you get what you made with a minimum of $2600. The WORST jobs are the pool jobs because of the time away from home. You might be called to take a train to Barstow at 0200hrs, get there at noon (10 hours on duty), go to the hotel for 12 hours, get called for a midnight train and not get to LA until noon. Total time gone, 32 hours and you COULD get called to go back to Barstow in only 10 hours. THIS is the worst side of RRing. These are just a few examples. YOU MAKE THE DECISION!