MODOC will teach you basic skills you need to know in order to work on and around trains without getting yourself hurt. They are limited in scope of what they can teach you. What you learn at MODOC will be roughly what you would learn during orientation on a short line. If a short line hires you, they will teach you those things for free. Even if you do graduate from MODOC, each railroad will want you to go through their orientation and training so you will learn how to do things their way. And yes, there are different ways of doing the same thing.
I have worked in both labor and management in all three classes of railroads. What railroads are most interested in is hiring people that are not going to cause trouble. This means people who are dependable, who can get along with others, and can work safely. The best way to determine this is to look at a person's work record. This is why experience is so important. When a new person applies for a job, a background search is initiated to help determine if the new guy is a potential problem. The main reason people do not get hired is because the person doing the hiring is worried that if the one he hires screws up badly, the person doing the hiring will get blamed.
Railroads realize that no one is born knowing how to do this. They usually give preference to people coming from a railroad background, like a railroad family. They do not do this to discriminate, but to consider how exposure to railroad life is absorbed by potential new hires. As you probably have figured out by now, this is a distinct lifestyle that people either like or hate. It is so demanding that people who cannot get to like it will wind up hating it. There are many sacrifices that must be made to work in this field.
You have chosen a noble goal. I have worked with many excellent Yardmasters, generally second or third-generation men. It is much like a Trainmaster's job: it combines technical and problem-solving skills with human relation skills. You have to know the yard as a whole: which way all switch points face, track capacities and names. You will have to know how to use the yard as a tool to make up the trains you need to build every day. You will need to know every person who works for you, their strengths and limitations. Sometimes, you need a lot of patience.
There is really no way you can just be hired and walk into this job, and have any hope of doing well. My advice to you would be to forget MODOC and get hired out on a smaller railroad that is big enough to devote the time needed to train you properly. A few Class One's do this well: BNSF has partnered with Johnson County Jr. College in Overland Park, KS in maintaining a true railroad university. If you get hired, they will send you there at their cost.
Even there, they will not teach you to be a Yardmaster. But they will teach you how to be a brakeman or switchman, and how to do it properly and safely.
The key to being a good Yardmaster is familiarity with the yard. Try to keep assignments in the same yard, regardless of hours and days off. Get to know the place intimately. Learn what each track is named and what it is used for. Learn the pattern of arriving and departing trains, and the time allotted for working each. Know by heart every detail of the yard, and get to know your customers and what details they like in the service they want.
I mean, get to know these guys by name. Call them by name if you run across them in a setting away from work. Make that yard become your yard.
Eventually, as you gain experience, you will find opportunity to be considered for switch engine conductor or switch crew foreman. You will then be the go-between linking the Yardmaster with the switch crew. When the time comes for another Yardmaster, you will then be a candidate.
When you start working, keep a notebook for each yard. Write down everything: tracks, switches, industries, trains built or torn down, peoples' names. When you are off duty, study that book until you know it by heart. Believe me, I've done that and it works.
A problem faced today that I didn't have to face when I started is the fact that railroads have pared their work forces down so much that the train crew is expected to handle virtually everything related to their train's work, including yard switching in most cases. Only the biggest, most important yards are going to have dedicated crews. Trains are switched from computer-printed lists that probably are not based on physical checks. The clerks are gone with everybody else. The longer these lists are made without the aid of human eyeballs, the further they are from reality. Train crews really don't have the time to check tracks that do not relate to the work done by their train. You will have to deal with that as a train crew member.
In the "good old days" a major yard would have a Yardmaster assigned to each 8hr. shift worked. Usually two or three per day. Inbound trains would drop off lists of cars and waybills. Yard clerks would walk the tracks and prepare fresh lists for the start of each "trick"(shift). These lists would be presented to the Yardmaster, who would spread them out on his desk.
He would study these lists and make note of where they must go: either for delivery to local industries or into outbound trains. After he gets a good handle on that, he meets with his switch crew foremen and gives them lists for the tracks he wants worked. The industry crew builds their train to go around town spotting and pulling cars. The yard crew foreman decides what tracks are clear for building trains, and starts pulling the inbound apart to mix with cars already there for outbound trains. When the industry crew gets back, their pulls are added to the outbound trains. It is the job of the Yardmaster and crew foremen to devise efficient plans for doing all this.
During all of this, the Yardmaster would keep the Dispatcher appraised of progress, and when the trains would be ready to go. The Dispatcher can then use these time estimates for calling road crews. The Yardmaster can also call the Roundhouse Foreman and let him know when he needs power and how large the trains will be, so appropriate power can be assigned.
This is, you see, a lot of work that must be co-ordinated between different departments.
Been there, done that, now retired.
Les