Article by Scott Clay

As my first installment to this column I’d like to tell you a little about myself, and how I came to work for the railroad. My name is Scott Clay, and I’m employed by Union Pacific in the Maintenance of Way (MOW) department. I am currently holding the position of Foreman Class 2 in the yard at West Chicago, Illinois. I have been employed by the railroad for 20 months, I’m a short-timer compared to my coworkers, but I have experienced a lot in that short time. Regardless, it's been a long road to where I am now.

After graduating from high school in 1988, I began looking for a job with the railroad, namely the Southern Pacific. SP was the railroad that served my hometown of Oxnard, California. I sent many letters of inquiry, only to be politely turned down time and time again. I finally came to the conclusion that I probably wasn’t going to work for the Espee any time soon.

Even though I was convinced I would never work for SP, I remained a very loyal fan. I eventually went to work for the oil company where my father was employed, got a commercial driver's license, and started driving a semi delivering petroleum products to the greater Los Angeles area. One of my regular deliveries was to the SP at their facility in Glendale. I was happy and settled in to this job, and didn’t give any more thought to working on the railroad……at least not until 1994.

In 1994 I was set up on a blind date with a girl from Illinois (little did I know this was to be my future wife). While on our date, I mentioned my interest in railroads, and she told me that her family worked for the railroad, three generations worth! Her great-grandfather started on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy before WWI, and her grandfather had started on the “Q” in 1950. Several of her uncles all started on Burlington Northern in the 70’s. Needless to say, I was once again bitten by the bug and began my quest for railroad employment again.

Seven months later I relocated to Illinois. I took a job with an over-the-road trucking company, got married, and started submitting resumes and attending hiring sessions. By this time my beloved SP had become part of the Union Pacific empire. Sadly, I truly would never work for the SP. Due to my wife’s family history with the Burlington, I concentrated most of my effort on BNSF. At the same time, I attended hiring sessions for CSX, Norfolk Southern, and UP as well. I started to get discouraged again after several hiring sessions, and never being chosen for an interview. I always applied for the same position, train service, but never could catch a break. After a while the railroads started slowing down with their hiring, and I stopped applying. Late in 1999, I began using my wife’s computer and going online looking for employment, searching all the job listings on the major railroads' web sites. I started with BNSF, who had a list of job hotline phone numbers for different regions. They never seemed to have anything I was interested in. I eventually ended up at the UP website, and they had a lot more to choose from. I immediately applied for train service for Proviso Yard (outside Chicago). No response. I applied two more times, and still no response. One night while looking at the job listings I noticed that there were a lot of track laborer positions available, and after reading that you could advance to train service from this position, decided to apply.

Two weeks after applying I was called for an interview, which was set up for July 19, 2000, and would take two days, I arrived excited at the Holiday Inn at Elmhurst on the 19th, and was overwhelmed when I walked in, as there were about 70 people there. My heart sank. I didn't think I would have a chance out of all those people. The whole thing started with an orientation about the job, different company policies and so on. I began noticing that as each aspect of this orientation passed that people were slowly leaving. Every time we took a break, more and more people began to slowly filter out, until we had about 48 people left.

We were each given a 5 minute time frame in which to be interviewed. I was lucky as I was the fifth one to be interviewed. When my time came, I was interviewed by a guy from Omaha who conducts these hiring sessions full time. The other guy was the Roadmaster from Proviso, and his interviews were short and not so sweet (they were actually very blunt and somewhat rude), so I didn’t have very high hopes. Before I left, I was told that they would call between 6 and 8 PM if they were interested in hiring me, and that if I didn’t hear from them to try again in six months.

I received the call I was waiting for at 6:48 that evening, and was asked if I still wanted to work for the UP. "Hell yeah!" I had to report back to the hotel the next day to fill out all the paperwork and schedule a physical. At this point I was officially hired by the railroad, and I’ll never forget how good it felt.

I have experienced many things, and learned much more since being hired, and every month I hope to share different stories with you about my experience on the railroad. I’ve had good and bad days -- even days where I absolutely swore I hated the railroad -- but overall, I really do love my job. I sincerely hope you enjoy my stories as much as I enjoy sharing them.

Until next month, work safe.