Railroad Jobs

They’re aren’t many people in the world who haven’t seen a train. They’re as much a part of the transportation environment as any other type of vehicle, though they’re much easier to spot traveling through the countryside or along urban railway tracks.

Many trains have a combination of uses including cargo (freight) delivery and passenger transport. Sometimes because of the changing economy, many trains have to perform both of these jobs at the same time, delivering freight and passengers to destinations all across the country.

In this section of JobMonkey you’ll find out about working in the rail industry, including what types of jobs are available and how the industry operations – worldwide, in the U.S., Canada, and locally. Discover many types of jobs, including:

• Dining car jobs on passenger trains
• Engineer jobs
• Railway maintenance jobs
• Train conductor careers
• Signaler jobs
• PLUS: Employer Profiles! Amtrak, Union Pacific, BNSF, Canadian National, and many others

A Wide Variety of Railway Jobs

Many of the people who work on the railways have a love of trains and probably always have. Engineers are trained in the safe and responsible operation of the trains and have to make sure that the train gets safely to its many destinations. Conductors are given the task of ensuring that all passengers have paid for their travel tickets and that they travel safely between destinations. As many passenger trains have diner cars to provide meals and drinks to passengers, each train has a few diner car employees who take passenger orders for food and drinks and either deliver them to their seat (luxury class passengers) or provide them in the diner car.

The freight trains that travel all across the country have their own types of specialized jobs and many people have found satisfying employment working on freight trains.
Cargo handlers are responsible for getting freight safely on and off the train cars, either by hand, cart or crane operation (from flatbed cars). Some train cars are specially designed to tilt over on their side and dump loads of bulk items into ramps or bins set up along the rail side. This is especially common with the transportation of metal ores, stone or even animal feed. Cargo trains still require engineers to operate them but oftentimes a conductor and diner car staff isn’t required as there aren’t generally any passengers on a freight train to take care of.