Hi !
Just wondering if anyone here made a switch in their career from aviation to railroad ? Or maybe jumped from rail to flying...?
Interesting to know all "pros" and "cons" of both.
I've had my CPL for a long time now and fly as a hobby but lately started to consider it as a career , at the same time I now have an opportunity to jump on with CN Rail as a conductor...
Would be interesting to hear from "avcanada" community...
Thank you!
I had a guy make the same decision way back when -- offered him a job flying and when he saw the pay he stayed on the railway -- that was then when the CNR was a protected job for life -- now I'm not so sure if the CN has the job protection of yesteryear -- but pension - time off and all that which seems to be difficult to find in Canadian Aviation unless you stick it out and are able to advance past 703/704 -- if you can take the shit and have the urge to fly -- go for it -- if you want a more stable road -- railway -- hands down --
PS you might move around with the CNR to keep your job just as much as aviation in the early years --
I've contemplated this a few times, each time I decide I should get into rail but never do. Working for CN or VIA you make good money when you move up from brakeman, pension, and the more time you put in the better the schedule, all comparable to aviation. Also there is a lot of work available over seas. Also if you work for CN and decided to switch to VIA your pension moves over, so you don't lose out by cashing out early, and your SR moves with you. This was the case 10 or so years ago, not sure if it is still the same. I have a family member that has since retired from VIA, he worked the first 19 years at CN then moved to VIA with his SR number and pension. He also now picks up contracts with VIA or CN for 4-6 weeks over the winter, mostly to cover vacation leave at smaller bases. While he's working he's getting time and a half and still able to collect his full pension, pretty decent little winter gig.
Have two friends with CN and one with CP. Asides from the small amount of instability in the first years (same as flying) it seems to be a sweet gig! Unlike aviation however.. those first few years all add up when it comes pension time!
Rowdy wrote:Have two friends with CN and one with CP. Asides from the small amount of instability in the first years (same as flying) it seems to be a sweet gig! Unlike aviation however.. those first few years all add up when it comes pension time!
Take it from this old goat(don't laugh cause y'all are heading in the same direction) - pension time is gold!!!!
Agree 100 %. Pension rules, especially when you cannot put money aside ( wife, kids, education, etc.) during your working life.
When you get older, pension weights in more than the sheer joy of flying. I will have my second pension next year, and I am glad I got these jobs.
Expat wrote:Agree 100 %. Pension rules, especially when you cannot put money aside ( wife, kids, education, etc.) during your working life.
When you get older, pension weights in more than the sheer joy of flying. I will have my second pension next year, and I am glad I got these jobs.
Thank you all for sharing your thoughts...
It looks like I will have to think hard before making my next step...
If anybody has anything to add, please go ahead !
I made that very decision myself 7 years ago (interestingly enough I also found advice on this forum). I chose the railway and I haven't looked back. I started as a conductor and am now a locomotive engineer. The money on the railway is very good and they pay you to train, not the other way around as in aviation. When I weighed the idea of spending $20k+ to go from my private to a commercial/multi IFR to launch into a career with all of the difficulties that go along with being low timer in the industry versus being paid (quite well) to train, going into a career that is very lucrative and virtually guaranteed with a big fat pension at the end of it the choice was easy.
The lifestyle of a running trades employee is definitely not for everyone, railroaders work almost exclusively on call. Attempting to plan anything is impossible and you have to be able to answer a call 24/7/365. I regularly miss events with friends and family and I spend an average of 100 nights a year in bunkhouses and hotels. Despite the high pay, job security and benefits of this job we have a really hard time retaining conductors because most people from the 9 to 5 world can't handle the lifestyle. If you work on the railway your life revolves around your job and there's no way around that.
The job itself is excellent. It's quite satisfying work, Canada's economy runs on its railways and it's neat to be a part of that. It also excites my inner 8 year old, the last train I ran was nearly two miles long, weighed 16000 tons and had four locomotives totalling 13400 horsepower (2 of those locomotives were more than a mile behind me and had to be run separately). I work on the former BC Rail line which features some of the steepest rail grades in North America and it's a great challenge to control all of that steel on the difficult terrain.
Railroading is dangerous. If you hire on the railway you all be working up close with thousands of tons of heavy equipment that can move at any time in any direction. You will be doing this after when you are dog tired after the phone has rung at unexpectedly at 0300 telling you to come to work. Workplace injuries involving conductors tend to be catastrophic. Some people are just not suited to work around equipment. If you aren't able to maintain situational awareness and work safely even when fatigued and distracted then the railway is probably not a good fit for you.
Flying is my passion and if money were no object I would choose flying in a heartbeat, but economic realities dictate otherwise. My career on the railway allows me to have a house, truck, motorcycle, overseas travel, and soon an airplane. The security of being in a recession proof industry and having an excellent retirement plan are rare things in any job these days and they are invaluable to me.
The railway is definitely not for everyone, but if you can hack the lifestyle (and the company) and work safely they will throw money at you to do a relatively fun job, then keep the money flowing all the way into retirement.
I have always had a subtle yet lingering interest in the Rail world. I always said if I couldn't be a pilot I'd want to be an engineer. My grandfather was a brakeman for CN way back in the 50s and he always spoke very fondly of it.
I've always wondered how you go about becoming an engineer? Pardon my ignorance but is it something you have to go to school for or can you be hired off the street and work your way up?
I have always had a subtle yet lingering interest in the Rail world. I always said if I couldn't be a pilot I'd want to be an engineer. My grandfather was a brakeman for CN way back in the 50s and he always spoke very fondly of it.
I've always wondered how you go about becoming an engineer? Pardon my ignorance but is it something you have to go to school for or can you be hired off the street and work your way up?
Cheers,
Chax
The typical route to become an engineer is to become a conductor, then be trained as an engineer. Transport Canada requires that engineer trainees have two years of railway experience and really the only way to gain it is to become a conductor. After you have your two years, when your railway has need of engineers you will have the opportunity to train as an engineer (in my case it was 3 years before I was able to go). Training is typically 3 weeks in classroom (theory and simulator training) followed by 6 months (give or take) of training on the road. Due to the way the collective agreements work people who are trained as engineers typically work as conductors for a number of years until they have the seniority to hold a job as an engineer in their terminal (though they may occasionaly be called as an engineer when the company is short). I am lucky enough to work on the former BC Rail so since I've been qualified I've never worked as anything but an engineer, but my experience is definitely not typical of a CN employee
Please forgive my ignorance once more but when I think of a conductor I think of a finely dressed gentleman looking at his time piece and yelling "ALL ABOARD!" so clearly I have no idea what I'm talking about. What does a Conductor do on a freight train? Are they more or less load masters?
You're thinking of the right guy, Chax, but that image you have comes from the past and also from passenger trains. The conductor on a VIA train still wears a uniform, but you're unlikely to hear him yelling anything, they use radios. All the yelling comes from when trains were shorter and they didn't have radios. The conductor and the brakeman used hand or lamp signals to communicate with the engineer.
I used to be a brakeman after college. I was too lazy to do "the drive" to look for a job as a floatplane pilot, and I was running out of money quick, so I answered an ad in the paper by CP rail looking for brakemen. This positon no longer exists, but I believe in switching yards the "foreman's helper" is still the equivalent, known as a brakeman in the past on trains, and "helper" on switchers, which is a locomotive that shuttles around a yard or terminal assembling the trains. Sort of like the conductor's co-pilot.
I only worked there for a couple of years. I was in CP's Lakehead subdivision, which was a grain terminal primarily, and the main-line run was from Thunder Bay to Ignace. I did both switching and main-line work, depending on seniority. The main line was favoured by the senior guys, because you don't really need to do anything (there were no stops at all to kick off cars between Tbay and Ignace) so I usually worked as a helper in the yard. This is more like playing with trains on a giant train set. You get assigned a locomotive, and an engineer and a foreman (conductor), and a great big list. The list has the order they want you to bust up a train, the numbers of the cars and the numbers of the tracks they want the cars in, and after that it's like a big game of "tetris". There's a lot of hopping around, uncoupling and coupling cars, shoving them around, riding on the outside of the locomotive and cars, it was great fun, and dangerous too, but the kind of dangerous that makes you feel great, for some reason. You really need to use your brain to get the cars all put away in the minimum amount of "moves". At the time we had radios, but were still allowed to use traditional hand signals. The only thing we were not allowed to do was a "run-around", which we almost never did, and "I drive planes" will know what I am talking about. I really liked it. Believe it or not, I aced the interview because my father, in his spare time, built his own little HO scale railroad empire in the basement, and I learned virtually everything you need to know about trains from Dad's modeling activities.
The downside, I found, was that I am a real "enthusiast" about whatever it is that I am doing, and this is what draws me to aviation, you know, aside from being employed I enjoy the company of my fellow pilots, who are not the troglodytes you will think they are if you read this forum too much. I didn't find among the CP rail employees there was a very satisfying level of enthusiasm or interest in railroading, just a very blue-collar desire to do as little work as possible and get the shift over and back to killing their brains with beer as quickly as possible. I couldn't stand some of the union mentality, and I got laid off and re-hired almost monthly. When CN went on strike, the Thunder bay townsfolk thought it was fun to . broken bottles at the CP crews because they were all too stupid to read the giant letters on the side of the locomotive and realise we were not scabs. I had the impression that the excitement would wear off at some point (hey it happens with planes too) and eventually realised that I had better get cracking looking for a flying job. But you know, if I could go back part-time, or maybe volunteer on a restored steam railway like the Kettle valley, I would in a heartbeat. Playing trains is one of the most exciting things a former little boy can do, and I didn't even get to drive the train (Well, I did a little, and I was allowed to blow the whistle, too!) it's way more exciting and dangerous than most people think. Walking around the yard, herding and riding on these massive virtually unstoppable behemoth vehicles, takes a lot of skill on the part of the crew.
P.S.. to answer your question, the conductor is not like a loadmaster. The loading is done by other people, you never see them. The "running trades" (engineers, conductors, foremen and helpers) just drive the trains, that's it. The conductor has legal responsibility for the train and is the equivalent to the captain of a plane or a ship, in a sense. In another sense, though, it is a different and more complex relationship, because the engineer is always senior and is always a former conductor. Imagine a flight crew where the co-pilot was actually in charge. Weird, eh? I was always the third crewmember and wasn't around long enough to fully grasp the engineer/conductor relationship.
Frozen.... They brought back the bk man position this winter! The new boss doesn't like the whole spare board guarantee deal so they have been putting brakeman on most trains. I have done very few trips as a conductor this winter, most of the time I'm in the second unit napping! Lots of trainees here now too, some trains are just like the old days with a crew of 4 or more! They need to put more power on just to store our shit. I work the keewatin and ignace sub but as of Monday training begins for the esr long run Kenora to thunder bay. It'll be a big change. Im just getting out of bed with a CPR hangover (as I call it) from a shit show trip! Good to have one once and a while to appreciate all the good ones!
Ha! They'd better bring back cabooses, too! I always liked those the odd time we used one. Made me feel all old-fashioned-y. Kenora to Thunder Bay, that would be a long one. Do you bunk over in Ignace or shoot straight through? If I remember correctly we had to sleep in Ignace because Thunder Bay and back wouldn't quite fit into a duty day... it was over 20 years ago for me, I'm starting to forget things.
I did Kenora to Thunder Bay straight through a couple of times myself off-duty. When I finally decided to get serious about finding a flying job I would sometimes get to or from an interview by showing up in the yard in Winnipeg or the station in Kenora and bum a ride by showing the conductor my ticket and riding in the second unit. It was sort of frowned on and a lot of guys wouldn't let you on one of the trailing units if it wasn't "equipped", but it was a neat way to get around.
My wife is cleaning out our spare room today and wants to throw out my old CP operating manual and CROR book. I took a look through it and found the form they gave brakemen to bid for the "road" or the "yard". I see that I filled it out but never handed it in.
Is Steve Yawney still hogging in Thunder Bay? Everyone called him "bigfoot". He's the one guy I remember from when I was there. I really thought he was cool. He could drive a GP-9 like he owned it and it owed him money, which is a strange thing to say about a train, but like I said he was a cool hand, at least I thought so when I was 20.
Those engines were all built before they even got around to getting rid of steam engines. I thought they were cool old things too. I wonder if they still use them.
I do trips regulaly to ignace from kenora and once and a while i guy gtes lucky and can double back home on and off. those are the good ones for sure, fast money. home in back in under 8 hours. usually end up in the bunk house in ignace for quite a few hours on a normal tour. being called for bk man tours is great, hop on the second unit put your feet up for a few hours, arirve at ignace and pick a train to come home on. lots of off and ons as you do not have to stay with the crew you were called with at the home terminal. The pay is only about 20 bucks less per trip so it is by far better then the spareboard gaurantee. i made 7 trips last half all on and off.
I know a hogger named randy yawney from t bay, he was workin out of kenora for the last few years but went back last change of card, i have herd of the guy your talking about but cant put a name to the face. Us fish heads don't mingle with you warf rats too often! the long run is going to be for all fast frieghts 100 series east and west from kenora to thunder bay straight shots, should be able to make it easly under the 10 hours if the rtc's part the seas. there is 2 east pools one for long and one for short hauls(kenora to ignace- all the shit trains) most of the senior guys bid the on and off kenora to t bay. i'm sure it will be a bit of a shit show for the first few months. I usually bid the east pool as a conductor but am now able to hold west pool so i think that will be me first choice. kenora to the peg. fast frieghts can be there in just over 3 hours on duty but then the average wait there is anywhere from 8 to 20 hours! lots of held away pay. lots of big changes at cp right now since old hunter has taken over, lots of guys are whining. The way i look at is any other industry or job for that matter a guy works 10 to 12 hour shifts, we have been spoiled here with our 5- 6 hours on duty. Guys will have to suck it up and take it, its sucks but it is normal to work a full shift.
I was riding around in the surgar shack(caboose) all last week on a work train. Thats about the only place youll see them any more is on some sort of assignment train. They are pretty neat little units, kinda like your own little appartment. The one i was in had the old oil burning stove taken out and replaced with a generator and electric heat. still had the old cook stove and fridge. couple tables and some small un comfy beds! My father in law and uncle spent many years riding around in those things drinking and playing cards. Deffinetly a different railway then, and that wasnt all that long ago. It was normal for the crew to be all pissed up and expected that the junior man would bring the cranky old hogger a bottle of whiskey!
, at the same time I now have an opportunity to jump on with CN Rail as a conductor...
