Is Trainz Just Like The Real Thing?

Do I have to go to college to get on with NS? I live about about 20 minutes away from a NS Railyard in Chocowinity. I have seen a few things were some companies require several years of college. I want a wife and kids. That would be 7 years of my life gone! I can handle 2 years as a conductor.
 
AWWWWWWWW YEAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!! Thanks for the info. Glad to know that I will most likely be eligible for the job when I'm 21! Me and my dad had been discussing what I wanna do when I grow up. He said its time to start looking around and taking it seriously.
 
Little aside here for what it's worth. My oldest son joined the Army right out of high school as an artilleryman, 2 years active and 4 years reserve. He got married and had a couple kids while on active duty, and one of the civilian jobs he looked at was with the C&NW. They were very interested in him because of his resume - handled high explosives safely, driving self propelled diesel powered tracked artillery vehicles like the M-109 Paladin, military discipline are all pluses when applying for any kind of job operating heavy machinery. He eventually decided against it because of too much travel - got a wife and kids you spend a lot of time away from home working for the railroad, and the lower your seniority the more likely you are to be called to take a train 300 miles from home on a Sunday afternoon then have to spend your wife's or kid's birthday in a motel or boardinghouse somewhere in NoWhere Pennsyltucky.

I'm not recommending that course of action, but if you're serious about making a railroad career, find out what makes the railroads go "YEAH! I want THAT guy!" so when you apply you have whatever they want already on your resume. And forget the wife, they're high maintenance and cost too much anyway. :hehe:
 
sniper297 said:
Little aside here for what it's worth. My oldest son joined the Army right out of high school as an artilleryman, 2 years active and 4 years reserve. He got married and had a couple kids while on active duty, and one of the civilian jobs he looked at was with the C&NW. They were very interested in him because of his resume - handled high explosives safely, driving self propelled diesel powered tracked artillery vehicles like the M-109 Paladin, military discipline are all pluses when applying for any kind of job operating heavy machinery. He eventually decided against it because of too much travel - got a wife and kids you spend a lot of time away from home working for the railroad, and the lower your seniority the more likely you are to be called to take a train 300 miles from home on a Sunday afternoon then have to spend your wife's or kid's birthday in a motel or boardinghouse somewhere in NoWhere Pennsyltucky.

I'm not recommending that course of action, but if you're serious about making a railroad career, find out what makes the railroads go "YEAH! I want THAT guy!" so when you apply you have whatever they want already on your resume. And forget the wife, they're high maintenance and cost too much anyway. :hehe:
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That is what the engineer I talked to a couple of weeks ago at the Railway Museum I visited, told me, that the reason he took the job at the museum is he got tired of being away from home for days and days at a time. Lots of one way trips that take you hundreds or thousands of miles from home, sometimes.
 
Its what I want to do. I have NEVER, not even once, considered applying for a permanent job other than working with, on, or near a train. I have been obsessed with trains as long as I can remember. I really do want to be with my family though. Maybe a web chat o some sort of daily communication would suffice. I know there are more bad parts of the job. For example: You could hit a car and kill someone. The emotional toll would be awful. You would feel very bad for taking away someones loved one. You could be in a derailment. You could be in a head on collision. You could lose your brakes and have to use a catch point. Plenty ca go wrong and kill you.
 
TrainzAreTheBest12 said:
I have been obsessed with trains as long as I can remember.
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It would be to your benefit to keep that fact to yourself when trying get a railroading job, they don't like "foamers". It's pretty much the same as police agency's dislike of hiring security guards.
 
TrainzAreTheBest12 said:
Its what I want to do. I have NEVER, not even once, considered applying for a permanent job other than working with, on, or near a train. I have been obsessed with trains as long as I can remember. I really do want to be with my family though. Maybe a web chat o some sort of daily communication would suffice. I know there are more bad parts of the job. For example: You could hit a car and kill someone. The emotional toll would be awful. You would feel very bad for taking away someones loved one. You could be in a derailment. You could be in a head on collision. You could lose your brakes and have to use a catch point. Plenty ca go wrong and kill you.
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Bottom line, is you have to do what makes you happy. Otherwise,life is pretty empty.
 
Well, I don't know if it's the same today, but a couple of contrasts in the days before cell phones and computers - telephones had rotary dials instead of pushbuttons.

Uncle Frank was a C&NW engineer who retired in 1968, the last 15 years were all spent working Monday thru Friday, never nights, never weekends, running way freights and shuttle movements around Chicago - he was home for supper and spent every night in his own bed since he had enough seniority to get that day shift work.

My first wife's brother worked from 1970 to 1976 as a C&NW fireman (still had 5 man crews back then, no FRED). The way that worked when you finished a run and after the mandatory rest period, your name was added to the bottom of a "call board". As trains were scheduled, they need a fireman for this train, they call the first name on the top of the call board. He better answer and be ready to go, or his name will be removed from the board until he calls in, and the next guy will be called. Each time a name is removed from the top of the board the other names are bumped up one space.

So again, the days before cell phones, Lee (my brother in law) had to call in every time he went somewhere to leave a phone number where he could be reached, and any kind of plans like picnics or taking the kids to the park had to depend on how far up he was on the call board and how fast the names were likely to move up - he could guess when the next time he had to start work, but the guesses were often wrong as extra freights were inserted, so if it's 4PM Friday and he's guessing he'll get his next run at 2AM Sunday, he might be right or it might be 4AM Monday or even midnight tonight.

Interesting job for a bachelor, but until you have enough seniority to get a regular schedule it's not the best job for a family man, so he quit and started driving trucks instead.
 
BD1 said:
In October, NS furloughed 200+ positions in the Bluefield and Roanoke coal areas, as decreased coal traffic led to the furloughs. They have 7 days to relocate to a new location (the company has offered affected employees jobs at seven other areas in the Norfolk Southern system: Chicago, Elkhart, Ind, Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio, and Conway, Altoona and Harrisburg, Pa), or be permanently let go.
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But we are hiring in other areas of the railroad. Yes, as a new employee with low seniority, you will work all hours, you will miss a lot of family functions unless you can schedule time off around them. It gets better as you gain seniority and can hold regular jobs with regular hours. This is good until you go to engine school. After school, you might work as an engineer or be demoted back to trainman. Once you do get promoted to engineer, you are back to the bottom of the seniority list as an engineer. More likeley than not you will be assigned to the extra list where you are on call 24/7. I've seen locations where engineers actually retired from the extra list. Things have gotten better, lately. NS has been shutting down for Christmas for the past years and sometimes New Years, so that is better. I think you have to be 18 or 19 to get hired as a conductor. NS does not hire engineers. One thing to remember, the railroad is NOT a job, it's a lifestyle. You can be sitting pretty one day, holding a good job and be looking for a job the next day. An example, I went from holding a great road job as an engineer, to a conductor on the same job, to the conductor's extra list to being furloughed in a matter of four hours.
 
Mouse84 said:
But we are hiring in other areas of the railroad. Yes, as a new employee with low seniority, you will work all hours, you will miss a lot of family functions unless you can schedule time off around them. It gets better as you gain seniority and can hold regular jobs with regular hours. This is good until you go to engine school. After school, you might work as an engineer or be demoted back to trainman. Once you do get promoted to engineer, you are back to the bottom of the seniority list as an engineer. More likeley than not you will be assigned to the extra list where you are on call 24/7. I've seen locations where engineers actually retired from the extra list. Things have gotten better, lately. NS has been shutting down for Christmas for the past years and sometimes New Years, so that is better. I think you have to be 18 or 19 to get hired as a conductor. NS does not hire engineers. One thing to remember, the railroad is NOT a job, it's a lifestyle. You can be sitting pretty one day, holding a good job and be looking for a job the next day. An example, I went from holding a great road job as an engineer, to a conductor on the same job, to the conductor's extra list to being furloughed in a matter of four hours.
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What does a conductor actually do? I am familiar with conductors on passenger trains, but can't figure out what a conductor would do on a freight train.
 
The conductor does the ground work, uncouples, couples, throws switches, rides the rear car on shove moves. Ties on and removes hand brakes on cars.
 
If you would like to be around your family, maybe there's a shortline in your area that does local trips 5-6 days a week. That's what my local shortline does and that's why I plan to work for them once I'm old enough. All they require is the state's driver's license and a high school diploma and they will train you once you're hired. Agreed on safety requirements, etc. You could purchase a scanner and get the RR frequency for your area and hear what they do a lot of times. At each switch, when it is thrown, they always have to "double check" that it is definitely back to the normal position before moving on. Like Denzel Washington said to Chris Pine in Unstoppable,"In training they just grade you an 'F,' out here you get killed."

I'm kind of hoping that Trainz will further me ahead in the knowledge of running a train. But, of course, there is NOTHING like the real thing.

Is there is a Railroad historical society or something in your area that you can volunteer for? that's always a great start. I just joined one a month ago (http://bellefontetrain.org/) and on their excursions you get to talk to the train crew (conductors, engineers, flagmen, etc.) and be a car host and ride along for free - just so long as you monitor activity in the car and help people on and off. You also get to punch tickets which takes about 10 min to go down one side of the car. You can talk to other car hosts and ask them all sorts of RR stuff.

When they don't have excursions, you can help maintain their track and practically work on the railroad. It may or may not be the same case in your area, but it's certainly worth a shot even if you have to pay for membership. Hope this helps.
Conductorboy
 
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conductorboy said:
If you would like to be around your family, maybe there's a shortline in your area that does local trips 5-6 days a week. That's what my local shortline does and that's why I plan to work for them once I'm old enough. All they require is the state's driver's license and a high school diploma and they will train you once you're hired. Agreed on safety requirements, etc. You could purchase a scanner and get the RR frequency for your area and hear what they do a lot of times. At each switch, when it is thrown, they always have to "double check" that it is definitely back to the normal position before moving on. Like Denzel Washington said to Chris Pine in Unstoppable,"In training they just grade you an 'F,' out here you get killed."

I'm kind of hoping that Trainz will further me ahead in the knowledge of running a train. But, of course, there is NOTHING like the real thing.

Is there is a Railroad historical society or something in your area that you can volunteer for? that's always a great start. I just joined one a month ago (http://bellefontetrain.org/) and on their excursions you get to talk to the train crew (conductors, engineers, flagmen, etc.) and be a car host and ride along for free - just so long as you monitor activity in the car and help people on and off. You also get to punch tickets which takes about 10 min to go down one side of the car. You can talk to other car hosts and ask them all sorts of RR stuff.

When they don't have excursions, you can help maintain their track and practically work on the railroad. It may or may not be the same case in your area, but it's certainly worth a shot even if you have to pay for membership. Hope this helps.
Conducorboy
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If you have a smart phone like an Android or iPhone, there is a free app call Tunein Radio. Do a search on that app for Railroads, and it will come up with quite a few Railroad channels that you can listen to from different lines. There is also a website with some links to railroad broadcasts. http://www.railroadradio.net/
 
In addition to all the things the guys have already mentioned - I have had opportunity to drive a few trains in my job as fitter , supervisor and training on steam and diesel locomotives and years in recovery I can say that I can relate to the real thing, those experiences make playing trainz more real, one can 'feel' the train running in or stretching out , feel the coupler slacks , feel the train start picking up speed downhill or start laboring uphill , instead off just hearing the sounds on a sim. A train picks up and loses speed quicker than one thinks, and the longer and heavier the train is the more skill is required to control it.
It is not like driving a car at all. Even with the engineer standing by and giving me advice, I still lost time quickly trying to concentrate on all the aspects involved, like not having knowledge of the road ahead, what should the speed be, how much brake to apply, are we not going too fast for this sharp curve coming up ?! , sound the hooter for the crossing, where is the next signal, what color is it, and a hundred other thoughts go through your mind .
One realizes at once that you are out of place behind those controls.
It takes many years of training to have the skills and knowledge that is required to be a good engineer.
You also have to have mechanical and electrical knowledge of all relevant locomotives and rolling stock to know what to do when there are failures and emergencies , have knowledge of all the different types of commodities , how the train must be marshalled and the engineer is the first in line to answer when there is an accident or derailment.
Driving passenger trains is another story , the responsibilities are huge. When a clerk makes a mistake, they tippex it out, when a shunter, conductor or engineer makes a mistake, you can't delete nothing... The stresses and strains on a train say 2 km's long is unreal...when the front of the train is already moving at say 6 mph and the slack is not taken up properly the van at the back starts flying away at terrific speed and the conductor ends up on his backside ...:)
But in all, I think the trainz game does give one a good start to what it is like in the real trainz world overall.
 
TrainzAreTheBest12 said:
If I can master the controls of an SD40-2 or GP38-2 on TRS2004, could I really drive the actual locomotive? I was thinking to myself while driving the engine, Is it really this easy? Sure it has to be more of a challenge in real life! If a 13 year old can drive and SD40-2 then why is it so difficult to get on with a rail company? This is my dream job. I want to know if this may help! Long story short-Can I drive a train?
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A good person to find out if trainz is like the real thing is kentith45. Kent has a job in QR and drives trainz and he should be able to tell you
 
LittleBondi said:
A good person to find out if trainz is like the real thing is kentith45. Kent has a job in QR and drives trainz and he should be able to tell you
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Thanks for that info. I want to get a job with Queensland Rail when I leave school, so I might contact him and ask him about it. :)
 
I think the conductor is responsible for the train itself. This could include the freight or the passengers. Anybody here see Unstoppable, the flick?

Cheers

AJ
 
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