Veteran Train Drivers Have Stopped Training New Hires at the Big Carriers — Here's Why

Veteran Train Drivers Have Stopped Training New Hires at the Big Carriers — Here's Why Three in the morning in a freight yard, and a twenty-six-year engineer tells the trainmaster he'll run the train, but he won't take a student. He isn't the only one. All over the big carriers, the people with the most experience on the railroad have quietly stopped teaching the next generation how to run a train. Nobody organized it. It's just the math every veteran started doing. In this video, a veteran engineer counts down the 10 reasons, from the ones you'd expect to the ones nobody in management wants to talk about: 10 - Trainer pay that doesn't match the weight of the job 9 - The liability lands on the veteran's certificate 8 - Training got shorter, and the "feel" can't be crammed 7 - Two-mile trains: every student mistake gets bigger 6 - On-call fatigue makes teaching unsafe 5 - The autopilot runs the train, and nobody learns the feel 4 - They train somebody, and he quits 3 - The discipline culture 2 - Nobody asks the veterans anything anymore 1 - They cut us, and then asked us to train our replacements Plus what it means for safety, service and the crew shortage, what young engineers can do about it, and what the carriers could change tomorrow. Did somebody train you right? What's the one thing they taught you that no book ever could? Tell me in the comments. The stories in this video are told from the perspective of a veteran engineer; names have been changed. Training, pay and discipline rules vary by carrier, region and labor agreement. #railroad #trainengineer #freighttrain #locomotive #railroadlife #trains #railroadjobs