Please note, that The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, or BLE, was not part of the 1969 merger which began the UTU. When I went into engine service in 1980, I had a choice between UTU or BLE representation.

The main difference is that the BLE had as it's founding principle that enginemen should always get more money than anybody else on the crew, while I and many others felt that we should not be working against the trainmen, but rather that we should combine our efforts for the common good.

From the outside looking in, I always find those types of things weird and oddly fascinating. Utah has always had an anti-union attitude, so honestly other than railroaders/miners there isn't just a lot of active union activity in the state these days. Honestly the most active one I know of is the Actor's Equity Guild for theater. Its strange to me to think any union would try and put a hard line on making some hierarchical paygrade, instead of just letting that be at the employer's discretion but again I am coming from a strong non-union state.

Then again, the type of engineer (Mechanical Engineering major) I am studying to be, is the type that will probably design the autonomous trains that may someday fully kill the trainman job (one man crew's? I feel like one of the few railfans who has no objections to that idea and would actually actively support it...), so I doubt my opinion would be popular among the rail engineers in the union's if they fully heard the kind of near future tech I support... In short, unions will always seem strange to me.