You're 100 % on this. I'm a retired Fed govn power engineer. Politics does rule the game. There are good and bad but unfortunately when you work with dangerous situations the weak get killed, injured or promoted. It's BS. I hate politics, but what got me through was there are enough folks who give a damn and who did it right. I guess looking at the big picture helped me to get through. Your're right about the ignorant/stupid . .. they don't know that they dont know. The more ignorant the more petty you become. With my industry, folks get killed or injured, then politicians or "experts" come out and try to "fix" things. Sorry for rant, I got triggered, but what you're saying is 100%.
There's another factor that affects the quality of hires in government agencies, something I often saw in my 38 years of working for one. Many managers don't want to hire or promote someone who is more intelligent than they are. This often severely limits the pool of "qualified" candidates.
Was gonna basically write the same thing. Heaven forbid they hire you and you figure out how to do the job twice as fast and with half as many people. lol
Mark, good video. I don't think that I have seen you cover this topic, so I will put it out there. When I was a conductor, managers would test crews with things like switches being marked, red flag between the tracks while being at restricted speed, etc. And we could get fired (suspended really) for a few months depending on the rule broken. Did managers do that in your department as well?
Not really. They would sometimes find you without certain PPE or improper OTS but, unless you already had a target on your back, would just warn you. If the FRA or PUC caught you things could go sideways quickly though. Thanks for checking it out!
Mark I guess I was lucky. For many years I had an excellent FRA inspector. He was a former SP maintainer. Very knowledgeable and fair. He did his job like he should.
We had narrow minded FRA inspectors in the Southern California area. One of the inspectors were looking at a grade crossing signal base being warped and said it was a big critical deal. In my opinion, It's not necessarily a critical deal. I could see myself being intimidated by those inspectors. The bottom line is I could never ask them to leave.
I'm generalizing, but some Fed/govn types do not like "push back". They want to fit in and not make waves. It depends on the outfit, or agency, and how dangerous the work is, but sometimes you have to push back (respectfully) against paper chaser authority types. If they have integrity they will respect a good healthy dialogue and disagreement, but in general I found it gets into ego and insecurity. I take your point about intimidation, but it sounds like you had your shit together and the inspector did not. He/she was more intimated by you most likely.
That was interesting Mark I'm not a rail but I enjoy talking to railroaders in general. What were your favorite moments on the railroad and your favorite experiences even funny ones? Also how did you deal with the unions throughout your career? Were they good at saving peoples jobs?
Very good commentary Mark. Now try to explain this...you have 2 hump yards in N. Platte been working since the 60's, now all of a sudden the UP decides they wanna shut down the East Hump yard and do all humpin for both east and west in one hump yard. Dont make sense!
I don't think much of the Unified 2020 plan. Most of it makes no sense. My guess about Platte is that they are essentially halving the number of trains being made up so they're halving the number of yards.
@@MarkClayMcGowan I'm in contact with a few yard engineers there and none of it makes sense to them. They're working twice as much getting cuts of cars moved to outbound tracks and using up much more diesel. No sense at all! There's some retarded peeple in Omaha.
You are correct - it does not make sense. However, this is yet another example of short-term economics that is taken ignoring the long-term cost implications. This reflects the policies of "economic vultures". 2021/04/25. Ontario, Canada.
Im an IRSE signalling Engineer from Great Britain with various experience on all sorts including Electrologix. Have you dealt with it yourself? I Would love to have a chat sometime.
Mark Clay McGowan Alstom provide it too us, we are getting a fair few bits in the UK now from the USA. We have some GE stuff also like the delphin protocol converters.
@@jamienewman1488 with all the global railroading mergers and acquisitions over the last decade it is hard to keep up. I dealt with Alstom as well with LED signals. Who knows how much more since I've retired.
The fra is guilty of being complicit in a COVID scam initiated by the railroads. At the beginning of the pandemic, the railroads petitioned the fra for exceptions to certain safety protocols and procedures based on the “possibility” that they would be short staffed due to employees being sick. The fra granted their petition. Meanwhile the railroads had and still have thousands of workers furloughed. There never was a shortage nor the threat of one. Being “essential” workers, railroad employees were not out of work and in fact were made to work under very lax sanitary conditions, to say the least. The exemptions granted are still in place and have been extended several times. It never was about concern of manpower, it was all about squeezing more money at the risk of endangering the public and crews. Notice the uptick in derailments in the last 6 months? Not a coincidence.
