Seen in the Press
Training on the rails
A new college program for railroad conductors is geared up to fill hundreds of potential jobs. Trainees include airline industry refugees
Kevin Giles, Star Tribune Tuesday, May 9, 2006
Gripping an operating lever with each hand, Donald Hubschman guides a rumbling 150-ton locomotive down the track toward Eagan as four boxcars roll along behind. Inside the noisy cab, he explains how failing to "feel" the tugs and surges of the load can tear the train apart.
"You can literally pop the engine right off the front," said Hubschman, 46, who runs trains in the south metro for Progressive Rail Inc., a short-line carrier based in Lakeville.
He retired as an Army drill instructor, and four years after he became an engineer, he's training fellow employees on the job, because so many of the nation's engineers and conductors will retire in the next decade.
In Minnesota, that could mean hundreds of jobs on railroads that employ about 5,000 workers, said Don Spano, who teaches Minnesota's only college railroad course.
Spano, a longtime railroader, said Dakota County Technical College in Rosemount started a course for conductors in August after railroads requested it.
His students -- many of them former Northwest Airlines mechanics -- complete a seven-week course and an eight-week internship before becoming certified as conductors.
Advantage for railroads
Conductors, who couple and arrange cars and make sure the cars get to their destinations on time, eventually become engineers. On some railroads it's mandatory to make the change, Spano said.
He said that there's a clear advantage for railroads to hire new workers who already know the complicated rules and procedures involved with trains and that many of his students now work in Minnesota and elsewhere.
Yet the job isn't for everyone, as some students soon find out.
Spano said conductors must learn hundreds of pages of railroad procedures and safety rules. Some students quit when they hear that, and others don't like the demanding on-call schedule of railroad work that often means spending weekends, birthdays and holidays away from home.
"Some people have this romantic outlook on the railroads," said Spano, who said his job at the college is to "prepare them for the type of life they're going to step into."
Dale Erickson, a conductor, remembers how it was working for another railroad. Before he started working for Progressive Rail, he spent only one Thanksgiving at home.
Now the Andover resident works Mondays through Fridays with Hubschman and other engineers, hauling freight such as pipe, lignite, corn syrup, flour and plywood to companies from Rosemount to Eagan.
One day last week, Erickson climbed out of the locomotive to couple it to a boxcar full of giant paper rolls on its way to a publishing company in Eagan.
'You've got to be safe'
Up and down the route from Rosemount, Erickson followed a detailed set of instructions telling him which cars to move and where.
And that wasn't all: "You've got to be safe," he said, explaining the high incidence of worker deaths in the railroad industry.
As Erickson worked on the ground, throwing switches and arranging cars, Hubschman watched him carefully, moving the train small distances as Erickson directed him on a two-way radio.
Spano said safety is paramount for both conductor and engineer in moving boxcars that when loaded can weigh 126 tons or more. "You have the dynamics of weight and mass," he said. "You have to understand those to safely and efficiently move a train."
Spano said it's not his role to promise jobs to students, who have to hustle them on their own.
However, he said their classroom learning -- coupled with practical experience in a college-owned train yard behind the college where they learn how to handle real boxcars and switches -- makes them good bets for jobs.
Said Spano: "I always like to think we've got something special here."