At the beginning of this, please let me make this very clear, I am NOT
placing any blame on this, everything will come out in due time at an
investigation.
Having said that, I will say that both Amtrak and all of the commuter
agencies who have their own operating personnel (engineers, conductors
and trainpeople) if these people first had to put in some time in road and
local freight service and really learn the job the right way.
I worked a lot of passenger jobs over the years and the best crews were
the ones where the individuals had some freight experience first.
What prevents that today, well in the early to mid 1980's, a separation
occurred. On January 1, 1983 all of Conrail engine and train service
employees in the northeast had to make a choice as to whether they
wanted to work for Amtrak, one of the various commuter agencies such as
Metro-North, New Jersey Transit, SEPTA, etc or stay and cover the
remaining freight work with Conrail. By the nature of the situation, the
vast majority of these employees ended up for the most part one
hundred per cent passenger service people.
"Boot Camp" meaning Oak Point Yard, Cedar Hill Yard, North Jersey Yards
etc, you get my point, are no longer places for relative new people to
really learn the job.
Years ago, most firemen worked switchers and local freights, through
freights and finally passenger jobs and often newly promoted engineers
had to go the same route too.
Today the new hire engineers go through a training program which while
extensive and expensive, still can't cover everything that one encounters
during their career. In addition, there is only so much a person can
absorb during a given period of time.
I would be willing to bet that if a background check were done on the
people in passenger service who have suffered discipline problems, that
the majority of them have had NO freight experience.
Generally, with the passenger railroads, the only possibility of any type of
freight work would be a work train and if it runs regular, chances are that
it would become a bid assignment and likely go to a high seniority crew.
I do not have a solution at present but this is one of the consequences of
the passenger railroads taking over their own operating people.
There is a limited free flow between Amtrak and CSX/NS in the corridor
but that is about it for the most part although other limited situations can
also occur. This flow situation only applies to the most senior people with
these railroads and not too much use is made of it anymore.
In the days of the Pennsylvania, New York Central and New Haven among
other railroads, an engineer or fireman could generally bid in any job that
they were qualified for whether it be a local freight, through freight,
commuter passenger or long distance passenger job or if they prefer they
could also bid in a yard job. The trainmen had it too but to a much more
limited scale at least on the New Haven and maybe the others too.
I can remember in my extra list days, I could be called for any of the
various types of work that I mentioned above. After I acquired enough
seniority for a choice of better jobs, I still had the opportunity every week
to bid in again, any of the above types of work.
Noel Weaver