Railroaders' Nostalgia > Hiring Out

 
Most rails remember their hiring out and first day, it’s something that sticks with you all through the years. Some of us ended up being boomers, in my case not because I wanted to, but it was a necessity in keeping employed in the industry or staying married. Anyway, I thought I’d share a few of my experiences.
 
As high school graduation approached in 1977, and for several months thereafter, I wrote to and applied to about every Class 1 railroad (and there were a lot of them out there back then) terminal roads and short lines. The number of rejection letters was staggering. I only wish now I’d kept them for all the neat letterhead stationery and signatures. As this effort got me nowhere, I went west and hit up the UP, C&S, D&RGW and MoPac in person; numerous times, over months. I got a few interviews and made many valuable contacts, the most fruitful being the C&S in Cheyenne, WY. But in the end, couldn’t get hitched up and returned east to work on a college education.
 
My first hire was on college break in 1979. A Conrail locomotive engineer friend called me and asked if I were interested in going to a Board of Director’s meeting in Cooperstown, NY for the Delaware Otsego Corp. “Sure !” After the formal meeting stockholders were treated to a luncheon at the Otesga Hotel on Otsego Lake.  So I’m sitting on the outdoor patio overlooking the lake at the same table as Walter Rich. He’s telling my buddy some deal about having to hire someone for something and my buddy says; “Dougie’s looking for a job too”. Walter turns to me and tells me to report to Bill Lloyd at the office on Monday. I think he also introduced me to Bill a table or two away. So that was it, filled out an application and my tax withholding forms, no physical or nothing and became a trackman / laborer. My first railroad retirement paycheck. It didn’t last long, but was a start.

The second hire was in 1980 after completing my associate’s degree. I left my graduation ceremony to meet up with the Trainmaster of the Adirondack Railway that was operating passenger service on the 118 mile Utica, NY to Lake Placid line.
I didn’t get hired that day as he was not yet ready to hire, but check back. Several times I went back and  ….nothing. Then one evening meeting him on the platform of Utica’s Union Station he asked if I had an overnight bag. “Well come back tomorrow morning and mark up at 0730 and bring your overnight bag”. When you get to Thendara fill out the hire paperwork so you can get paid. That was it !  I started as a brakeman, regular assignment, no extra-board on the 118 mile run, in passenger service where I was making more money than I knew what to do with.

In 1985 I had been out of railroading for a few years as the Adirondack operation had shut down. I was married now with a young baby. Another Conrail engineer friend had been furloughed and hired on to Metro-North Commuter Railroad at Harmon Shops. Would I help move the family?  So one Saturday I help with the move to Peekskill. His step-son and I were railfan friends from way back and after unloading the last load and carting it up three stories we decided to take a ride to Grand Central to visit another old friend who was now Chief Road Foreman of Engines. He was at GCT down on Track 14 in a little trailer office. Also there was a mechanical General Foreman named Jerry? Larkin. He was wired like no one I ever saw, a real crazy man. He and the RFE got to talking and Larkin picks up the phone and calls Personnel and tells them he’s sending two guys up to hire out. Huh ??!!

So up we go and meet Hermann Peterson (I think I remember the name correctly). He interviews us and had a manner of speaking where he interjected after almost every sentence; “you know what I mean? you know what I’m talking about?, you know where I’m coming from?” . Next I know I’m downstairs in GCT at the medical office getting a full blown physical with back X-rays and everything.  Coming back up Mr. Peterson hands me a bunch of paperwork and says to hand it off to the Shop Manager at Harmon when I get there, a Mr. Timmins. He then apologizes he cannot hire my railfan buddy Tim due to a hearing deficiency. Off we go on the M1’s to Harmon and I drop the paperwork to Mr. Timmins. “Just set them on the desk there” is all he said. No small talk, no real introductions, nothing. So, ok out we go to catch the Budd Cars north. On Monday morning I get a call at my place of employment from Timmons. “Why are you not here, and if you want to keep your job you better show up on time tomorrow AM. YIKES !!! – ok …. I immediately quit my job, called the wife at her work and explained it all and off I went 200 miles back to Harmon to report to work. I never even went with the idea to hire out, much less in such a crazy hectic and upsetting manner. How different from so many formal attempts at applying !
 
The last one I’ll mention is the Alaska Railroad. An Alaskan vacation led to that move. I applied for several jobs and had several interviews that didn’t culminate in an offer until I went for an engineering project manager position. I got an initial offer, but hedged on it. They kept calling and finally asked me to give them an offer for what I wanted (within reason). By then I was getting reluctant and had a good job with no real reason to leave other than adventure. I threw some things out           (some bordering on unreasonable I supposed) and again got a call back that they would agree to it, when did I want to start. Kind of thinking it over and now I’m getting a little shy about it. Finally they called and simply asked which of several dates in the next two weeks would work best for the moving van to come. I selected one and went in and gave my notice, starting another adventure that holds many fond memories still. The big issue was when I got there. I had asked about Railroad Retirement and they said "yes". After making the move and 4600 mile drive north I'm sitting in the office there and looking over paperwork and asked; "what's this one?" Oh that's Railroad Retirement. "No it's not !"  Well it's "like" Railroad Retirement. it worked out in the end, but RRB Railroad Retirement is different than Alaska Railroad Retirement.
 
Would I do things differently looking back?
Probably not !
 
I had a great career, and these are just a few of the “starts”. Over the years there were lots of adventures, lots of hard work and tough times, lots of moves but no regrets.
 

 
 
 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/24 08:16 by train1275.

Crazy. I went to Santa Fe in Los Angeles on 18th birthday 1967, took tests and back Xrays. Turned down on back. Went to Los Angeles Junction, turned down same thing. "May or may not ever have trouble but wont' take the chance". Ten years later more females hiring on with similar back conditions that I have but since female and maybe, determined discriminitory, so, back Xrays discontinued. Friend calls Sunday night with info that no more back Xrays. Santa Fe is only taking applications one Monday a month. Next day is the day. Take off work at lunch, wait in line with HUNDREDS, fill out application. Go back next month and do same thing. Get the call for MAY '78. Back then, you had to litterally write the entire rule book on paper before you could mark up. While writing rule book wife gets call when they ran across second application and tells them they already hired me. Marked up 5/8/78 on Santa Fe Los Angeles Hobart Yard extra board. It was a long first year as you had to work on the ground for a year before you could put in for engine service and LA switchman board very unique as it was a "show" board meaning you had to show up at the yard office to see if you would "get out", or work, that shift. This could happen three shifts a day but were required to show at least one shift a day. No phone calls except when very desperate. It was the same for both San Diego and San Bernardino yards. Showed up seven or eight times a week (thirty mile round trip) to work three or four shifts. Went into engine service with a 5/7/79 fireman date and eventually a 9/80 engineer date with no regrets retiring 7/1/09.
JB

I hired on the late, GREAT New York Central on August 14, 1963.  I had a great career on NYC/PC/CR for 33 years.

Hired out as a brakeman on the Southern Pacific in 1966 in Los Angeles.  I'd only planned to make it a summer job while going to college, but it wound up being a 40 year career, retiring in August of 2006  During that time, I put in 16 years as a United Transportation Union Vice Local Chairman, and Local Chairman, representing the Los Angeles'Bakersfield trainmen.
I remember the safety film they showed us during training was so old, it had steam engines in it.  You had one day of classroom training, and then eleven days on locals, and two round trips on the main line.  My main line trips were to Indio and Bakersfield.
While making student trips, you also had to write the rule book exam.  It was open book, do it on your own time.  A lot of the questions were "Do you understand that..................?"  They weren't even graded, it was just a record for the company.
I kew I was getting closer to retirement when some young brakeman asked me "Brian, was the SP still using steam engines when you hired out?"  Legitimate question.
"No, steam had been gone for nine or ten years when I came to work here," I replied.
Another young brakeman wisecracked "Hell, when Brian hired out, horses were pulling these trains."
A long career, but there's not too many things I'd change.  I was blessed with a good wife that stayed with me through it all.

Brian Black
Castle Rock, CO.

You were lucky, after almost 20 years mine was tired of the never being able to depend on me to be there.

Actually after 28 years I’m sick of it too…

Regards

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Not my hiring story, but what I witnessed. It was about 1977 and my employer, SP, advertised in several newspapers on the weekend that they would be hiring some 30 (can’t recall the exact number, possibly higher) M of W laborers. Applicants were directed to Western Division HQ at 1707 Wood St., Oakland, CA on Monday morning. I did not see the ad so don’t know if the pay was mentioned, but the turnout was exceptional. 

SP’s Personnel Dept had sent 2 reps over from San Francisco with enough multi-page application forms plus a few extra to fill the positions. Over 100 people showed up and more kept arriving. An angry crowd developed in the parking lot, demanding that they be given the opportunity to apply. At that time there was not yet a high capacity/ high speed photocopy machine at Oakland. The PR folks spoke to the crowd and told them to return the next day when they would have plenty of forms available and that no one would be hired before everyone had time to complete and have their applications reviewed. The crowd quickly calmed.

The error in this hiring method surfaced in just a few months. PR folks hired based on what the applicants wrote on paper, not on personal interviews or even common sense. One must remember that the nature of M of W work is outdoors and often involves heavy manual labor. So they hired a tall thin guy who claimed to have a college degree in psychology. He quickly claimed a back injury. He had faked his background in all respects. Another new hire had other problems. He had fabricated his residential  history as well as the company he wrote that he owned and ran - it never existed. A female was hired who spoke very well but soon all she would talk about was how everyone was sexually harassing her. And there were others.

It would have been preventive to let a managing supervisor in the hiring department (someone who has performed the actual work)  do interviews and then make recommendations to the PR folks.
 

It would have been preventive to let a managing supervisor in the hiring department (someone who has performed the actual work) do interviews and then make recommendations to the PR folks.

But that would have made common sense, and more importantly it would have cost 💲.

Das ist verboten.

Regards

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Never got a chance to hire out on the DL&W as a Hostler Helper in Hoboken, NJ during the summer of 1959. My mother didn't want me to work for the railroad, as my father and his father had. Thus, I was forced to attend college and get a "good job". Subsequently, I  was hired by EMD, June 1st, 1962, in the Field Service Department. Fun times delivering new units in 1962, 1963, and 1964. Got drafted into the U.S. Army in late November 1964, during an assignment in Mexico. The Mexicans were NOT happy when I disappeared in order to head for a Military Leave, and report to the Draft Board in Morristown, NJ.

Drknow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You were lucky, after almost 20 years mine was
> tired of the never being able to depend on me to
> be there.
>
> Actually after 28 years I’m sick of it too…


My late wife hated who I worked for, not railroading. She stuck it out, including a year in Havre MT, not a really pleasant experience from someone from Boston

TAW

I had the good fortune to be introduced to a friend of my mother, a Santa Fe operator at Willow Springs IL. I was in 5th grade. "Visiting" one day turned into  four  years as an unofficial "apprentice"  handling agency work and 20ish miles of CTC. He was as eager to teach as I was to learn. I met the B&OCT towerman at McCook on the block phone, reporting trains to and getting train reports from him. One day in 1963, just before the Willow Springs CTC was consolidated into Shopton and the station closed. I asked if I could come over and see what goes on in a tower. That turned inot a four year unofficial "apprenticeship" not only in working the tower, but helping him study to be a train dispatcher. By senior year in high school, I was running the place myself (with him always attentive). It seems that not only did the IHB and Santa Fe dispatchers know about the "apprentice" at McCook, the B&OCT Chief Dispatcher did too.

High School graduation was June 15 1967. My friend told me that I should go to Grand Caentral Station the next morning and see the Chief Dispatcher.  He sent me upstairs to the company doctor who checked to see if I was breathing and had a pulse, then back downstairs to the Chief with a paper that said I was alive and well. JFJ told me I was working 3d trick, 11pm, McCook that night.

In 1967, I loved it.

In 1997, I couldn't do it any more.

TAW

In 1997, I couldn't do it any more.

The year I hired on. There were actually a couple of steam firemen still working… Old Heads were around but retiring fast, us young’uns were trying to learn… fast!

It’s gone to hell, and ain’t getting better.

Regards

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Drknow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In 1997, I couldn't do it any more.
>
> The year I hired on. There were actually a couple
> of steam firemen still working… Old Heads were
> around but retiring fast, us young’uns were
> trying to learn… fast!
>
> It’s gone to hell, and ain’t getting better.
>


I didn't realize it has been nine years since I posted this (I knew it was a while and a half, but not that much): https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?18,3772054,3772054#msg-3772054 Date: 06/17/15 09:56
BN - I can't do this any more Author: TAW

TAW

Train service at age 18 (1977).

Engineer trainee at 19 (1978).

Promoted and running freight trains at 20 (1979). They must have been out of their minds.

Having survived three mergers, I retired three days after my 60th birthday. I tell people that I didn't enjoy every day, but there was never a day that I didn't like what I did for a living. And that is a blessing.

 

RetiredHogger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Train service at age 18 (1977).
>
> Engineer trainee at 19 (1978).
>
> Promoted and running freight trains at 20 (1979).
> They must have been out of their minds.
>
> Having survived three mergers, I retired three
> days after my 60th birthday. I tell people that I
> didn't enjoy every day, but there was never a day
> that I didn't like what I did for a living. And
> that is a blessing.

Congrats. You are incredibly fortunate. Enjoy every minute.  

I began applying to every railroad under the sun the day after my 18th birthday and landed a couple of interviews here and there. I didn't get a break until 2.5 years later when a friend of the museum attended an event and asked "who's the kid" to one of our team. That night I had a message in my facebook inbox that he could line me up with a local shortline and to meet him at such and such place and time. Two days later i showed up with boots to what I thought was an interview but the details were fuzzy. He showed me how to start the engine, we went to dinner while it warmed up and I was told to work the ground for the first half of the night and work the engine for the second half and if they liked me i would be told to come back for the next two days. 

Jeff

I've been reading these interesting tales of getting hired out on the railroad and my experience was very different. I don't know if I was very lucky or simply in the right place at the right time.

In late 1971/early 1972 I was a senior in high school in San Rafael (north of San Francisco). Even though I was only 17 years old I went to SP's employment office in San Francisco while on Spring Break from high school and submitted an application. It would end up being the only application I would put in anywhere and would result in 43 years with the SP and via "merger", UP.

My visit to the employment office was very low-key; I simply filled out and submitted an application. Although it wasn't a real interview I did chat with a nice lady there for a few minutes. I explained that while I was only 17 at that time I would be turning 18 at the end of May before I graduated and would be interested in a job. At that point I had no idea what might happen.

I graduated high school in early June and shortly thereafter I got a call from SP asking if I was still interested in that job. I said I was so they gave me a date and time to go to 515 Bay Street in Oakland for an interview. To this day I have never sat through an actual interview but what I experienced was more of a casual chat with this person, not what I would expect of an interview. After a short discussion he told me to go to another building about a block away right outside of West Oakland Yard. SP still had their own medical department and facilities and this was one of their medical offices. I don't remember much of the physical but I know I didn't have any x-rays taken. I assume I had vision and hearing checked. The one test I do remember well was the color blindness test as all he did was pull 4 pieces of cloth out of his drawer and asked me to identify each color: red, yellow, green, and blue. After that he simply told me I might get a call in a few weeks.

Sure enough, a short period of time passed and I got a call telling me to report to Oakland for training (don't remember if it was Bay Street or Wood Street). What I discovered was the class was actually 20 people which would be divided with 10 going to Coast seniority and the other 10 going to Western seniority. It turned out it really didn't matter because earlier in 1972 SP trainmen and switchmen had gained system seniority so they could move at will to where they wanted. The class was divided by seniority with the top 10 going to San Francisco and the other 10 staying in Oakland. Seniority was chosen by drawing numbers out of a hat; I got #1.

Training was 3-1/2 days of classroom learning the very basics of the job. Keep in mind in those days it was almost certain the new guys would be with old heads so you'd be getting lots of OJT after marking up and it would be years before you'd have a chance at promotion to conductor. In any case Monday through Thursday morning was all classroom dealing with basic rules. We had to wear boots on Thursday because in the afternoon we made a field trip into the yard to actually deal with freight cars learning how to cut brakes out, apply handbrakes, replace knuckles, and generally things we might have to do in real life. Friday was a later afternoon session where the Coast people went to Bayshore and met up with an extra yard crew where we learned and practiced hand signals, getting on and off equipment, making cuts and coupling joints. After a dinner break we came back and did the same things using lanterns instead. 

Then came 2 weeks of actual student trips. The Coast guys had to do a day on the commute trains learning how the equipment worked. I was lucky because the conductor I was assigned to had an extra uniform that he gave me so as soon as I marked up I could work commute trains. Although I lived in San Rafael most of my student trips were in San Jose. My first week was on the Gilroy Local with an awesome crew that took good care of me. I then spent most of the next week on the night Sunnyvale Local. While the old-head brakeman on that job was a real a-hole the other brakeman stood up for me and slowed things down so I could learn; he was awesome. I finally marked up at the end of September which started a 43 year run, most of it good times even after UP came along finishing my career in 2015 as an engineer working out of Eugene.

From what I read here, and used to hear from the newer guys before I retired, things have sure changed a lot since I went through it. If this were 1972 I'd do the same thing all over again but if I had to do it today, knowing what I know, there's no way I'd go through it.

 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/24 07:08 by Railbaron.

I came from a family of railroaders. My Grandfather, Father, sister, sister in law and my brother in law. My career started in 1969 at the age of 18. My first job was a Rodman in the engineering dept. I received an education in track building, track maintenance etc. The job was a designed for engineering students attending college.
The next summer hired out again this time in the operating department as a brakeman on the SP Los Angeles Division. Worked the entire summer when the hours of service limit was 16 hours and made lots of money. The 100 mile basic day paid $29.00. Returned to college and completed my degree over the next two years. Mostly was on a leave of absence and came back to work during the holidays.
In June of 1973 decided to make the change to engine service and transferred to the San Joaquin Division. I worked out of Bakersfield for a week and transferred to Los Angeles and worked Coast passenger, through freight LA to Bakersfield and San Luis Obispo and locals. A year later went to the simulator a year later.
Had an interesting fun career working passenger, officers special, thru freight, locals . Taught Operation Lifesaver for 30 years. Finished my career August 1 st of 2022 after a 53 year long career.

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