(The following article by Todd C. Frankel was posted on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website on March 27.)
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — Robert Wagner still wears his hair in a tight
military cut, but he recently retired from the Air Force to pursue a new
career: railroading.
So Wagner, 38, from Clovis, N.M., paid his way here to the National Academy of
Railroad Sciences. It is one of the few schools in the nation dedicated to
teaching life on the rails. The academy, part of a community college in this
suburb just west of Kansas City, offers courses for conductors,
signalmen, welders, even an associate’s degree in railroading.
Wagner wants to be a conductor – the No. 2 person on a locomotive, the one who
handles the paperwork and unhooks boxcars. A father of two, he was attracted by
a starting salary that can top $60,000 a year.
The job might seem like a relic from a different era, back when railroads were
shaping the American West and transforming dusty spots on the Prairie into
boomtowns. But railroads such as BNSF and CSX have been hiring at a frenzied
pace. The industry estimates it needs to fill 80,000 railway jobs – mostly
conductors – in the next few years due to growth in freight hauling and
recently relaxed retirement rules.
Yet finding new hires, even for these good-paying, blue-collar jobs, hasn’t
been easy. Perhaps the biggest obstacle is people’s perception of the railroad.
“People think of Amtrak. And they hear Amtrak is going out of business,” said
Jeffrey Abbott, director of training services at the academy. “They don’t think
the railroad as being an industry that’s a viable career.”
To lure workers, railroads have resorted to unfamiliar recruiting tactics. The
railroad academy runs ads in movie theaters. It sends out direct-mail fliers,
including a blanketing of the St. Louis region in recent months. It targets
high school counselors and workers at shuttered factories, such as the Ford
plant in Hazelwood. Academy staff members were there last month and
plan to return in April.
The academy hopes to attract workers who never considered railroads or never
thought they could get hired on. Wagner was one of them. “I thought you had to
have a father or brother working on the railroad to get a job,” he said.
The results are changing the face of railroads. That was on display recently in
Classroom 106, where Wagner took notes on the day’s lesson: how to stop a
locomotive.
Instructor Mark Williams threw a heavy black lever on an old locomotive control
stand sitting in the corner. That’s how you set the emergency brake, he told
his 24 students. When that happens, a burst of air escapes from the brake line.
“All of you who live in railroad towns have heard that before – the psoooshhh.”
A couple of years ago, most of Williams’ students were in their early 20s. Now
he sees more gray hair – students like Steve Burrus, 43, who lives in Amarillo,
Texas, and used to work for Phillips Petroleum. And there are more students
looking for second careers. Gary Reid, 47, came to the academy after his
employer, an Oklahoma plastics plant, closed its doors in November and he lost
his machinist’s job.
There are more women and minorities entering an industry still dominated by
white men. In Williams’ class, there were five minority students and one woman,
a 17-year-old from Olathe, Kan. Williams said his classes usually have two or
three women.
Before coming to the academy, Mark Brimall, 29, was studying to be an architect
and helping build houses near his home in Chandler, Ariz. But business was
dying, and he decided to try railroading. “But a lot of my co-workers thought I
was crazy,” Brimall said.
Mike Nunnick, 27, ended up in Williams’ class after leaving the Army in January
and returning to find few job prospects near his home in Shawnee, Kan. “There
are no jobs to be had, unless you want to make $6 a hour flipping hamburgers,”
Nunnick said.
In addition to class instruction, the academy has a training rail yard with
three locomotives and 16 boxcars. It is operated by Burlington Northern-Santa
Fe Railroad. But students in the six-week conductors class receive no job
guarantees and pay tuition, ranging from $4,400 to $5,400. Other railroads hire
from the academy’s ranks. BNSF just gets first dibs.
Although the community college offers a two-year railroading degree, not many
people stick around to earn it. They take their 16 credit hours and land a job,
said Andy Burton, academy director and assistant dean at Johnson County
Community College.
Until recently, the nation’s railroads were mired in a hiring lull that began
with industry deregulation in 1980, when the largest railroads employed a total
of 460,000. That was followed by decades of shrinking payrolls due to new
technology and company consolidation. By last year, those seven largest
railroads employed 165,000, accounting for about 90 percent of all railroad
workers.
Now railroads need to hire, thanks to increased demand for coal and overseas
goods. Last year, U.S. railroads moved a record-breaking 28.9 million units of
freight. And in 2002, new federal railroad pension rules took effect, lowering
the retirement age to 60 from 62 for rail workers with 30 years experience,
causing older workers to leave the ranks earlier.
While the pay is good, the life of a conductor can be tough. Conductors are on
call 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. To drive the point home, the academy
does not recognize most holidays. The first day of class for the current group
of conductors was Feb. 20 – Presidents Day.
“But the thing is, no one ever quits. No one ever quits the railroad,” Williams
told his students.
The pay is good, he told them, but the money is not so good that you do it for
that alone. You’ve got to love it too, he said. Because there’s nothing worse
than getting home after a long day of work, pulling two hours of sleep and
being called back in.
There are complaints to life on the railroad – the odd hours, working in the
harshest weather conditions, Williams said.
“But every time I get a class of 30 people in here who want the job I have –
who want to be conductors – I feel pretty pleased about that,” he said.