Not quite sure how you would see that as "working with different people everyday". Figure there are hundreds of guys in your BNSF terminal right now. There might be a few dozen, where you are looking. Seems you are going to run out of "different guys" rather quickly. Also take into account, some shortlines offer little, or no real training. You hear about "old school" railroading, but a lot of it is just plain unsafe. I enjoy working either way, but the number of near misses on the smaller roads outnumbers the larger ones many times over. Some places are using guys with only a month, or two on the job, to train their "new guys". They themselves were trained by a guy, with only a few months on the job, as well. I sometimes spend hours a day, making sure I'm not about to couple up, or run over some of these guys. (as well as trying to figure out just what the hell they are doing, back there) It makes for a very long day. as for the San Joaquin, we have about half a dozen of their guys up here. They quit, for the better money up here, and the chance to work without switching hundreds of cars a day, into industries over a few scant miles. No sidings, or storage yards mean the industry tracks serve as storage tracks, and you have to switch out cars, just to get in there, and switch out cars.
Traveling Engineer, Coast to Coast, Border to Border.
Any Train, Anytime, Anywhere.....