Could someone give me an idea of pay for road crews
1945 to 1951? Hourly and annual on a large
Northeast road.
Thanks.

While it is a little later then you are looking for, in 1955 on the NY,NH&H, a Steam Locomotive Engineer earned between $13 and $18 an hour with $2-$3 additional for overtime depending on the weight of the locomotive. It was in the back of an ETT a few members were looking at last weekend at
the Connecticut Eastern RR Museum in Willimantic, Ct.

Rich Cizik

WHAT!!! $18 per HOUR in 1955? Something didn’t look right here, so I dug out a copy of the 1954 firemen’s agreement. Those are rates per DAY, for the basic day which was 100 miles and less than five hours in passenger service; eight hours in freight. Additional miles over 100 were paid mileage, while additional time was paid overtime.

All these rates were on a sliding scale determined by engine weight on drivers; the basic day for firemen ranged from $13.10 - $16.48. Overtime was also on a sliding scale, the minimum was $1.635 per hour. I can’t seem to find the table for additional mileage (these things are VERY dry reading) but I believe it was paid as hourly OT based on 12 ½ miles per hour.

These are from the agreement between the Soo Line and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, the rates are from the national agreement and include the rates for things the Soo never had, such as electric locomotives and “Mallets”. The the document then becomes more specific to the Soo and defines the weight on drivers for each class of their power and ends with pages and pages of arbitration decisions (arbitraries) that are specific to the unique situation at one particular location on the railroad.

These labor agreements are pretty easy to come by on e-bay or with railroad memorabilia vendors, they are not obvious because the don’ say “agreement.” They say “schedule”, because they contain the schedule of pay rates. Typical format on the front cover of a pocket size pamphlet is:

SCHEDULE

Between

(Railroad name)
and
(union name)

Effective date.

Hope this helps.

I remember talking to a brakeman on the Lackawanna (well, just after the merger, but we won't go there----) and he told me his rate was 19 a day or 95 a week. As a child, I was impressed, but not now-

Just to amplify this topic to make it clear railroaders were not among the highest paid workers until relatively recently, my father-in-law started his career as a machinist with the Pennsylvania RR in 1939. I recently saw his first pay slip, which listed his rate of pay at 34.5 cents per hour.

When he returned from military service in World War II in 1945, he became a gang foreman, for which he received 86 cents per hour. (I believe someone had an eye on him, since he was among the first PRR men sent to LaGrange to learn how to maintain the new E-7 diesels.) Not until the late 1950's, by which time he had nearly 20 years of service, did he receive over $1.50 per hour. Luckily for him, he ascended into management ranks in 1963, and by the time he retired in 1981, he was making a respectable salary in the low $40's.

He was (and remains) very proud that he was able to send all four of his children to college on his salary, and he also was able to rise to the second highest management job in his craft at his location without a college education. At the time of his retirement, he was the only member of the management team who had worked his way up from machinist apprentice to assistant shop manager.

a little off topic...
Another thing to remember is that many railroad workers were laid off at the end of WWII as the war traffic slowed down. My grandfather, a car inspector, was laid off the PRR in late '46 and wasn't recalled until mid '47. That being said, he never got rich working 42 years for the PRR. He retired in '62. However, he always provided a good home and comfortable living for his family.

Thanks for the input. Easy to find "average" wage stats but
not so easy to find actual per hour or payperiod stuff.
Also the inflation calculators can be awful misleading as
not everything goes up some go down.
I look at durable high quality items then and now and see
what % of the average guy's purchasing power is required
to obtain an item.
Ive heard that engineer pay was twice fireman pay
and Id like to actually hear from somebody who
remembers or heard from one who worked then.
Of course, real pay stubs are the best!

Thanks to all.

Dennis, you are right, sorry as I was going from memory.

Rich C.

Rich,

Easy mistake, since no one thinks pay per day anymore. But somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I recall that my dad, a union carpenter working in Chicago, was making something like $4.50 per hour in 1958 or 59; I didn't think that engineers were making four times that pay a couple years earlier.

The 1950's was the start of this perpetual inflation that has raised the dollar amount of our pay even while lowering our actual standard of living. Pay comparisons need to be on a year by year basis, or they don't mean much.

Dennis

When I plug your Soo Line figures for 1954 into a CPI calculator and figure 250 days worked per year, the salary range is from $26,248 to $33,023 per year in 2008 dollars. My assumptions may be off, but still not much pay for a job with bad hours.

Don't forget that some railroaders didn't work every day. Some train crews worked out one day, back the next, then off a day, then repeated the routine. Others, especially extra men, might have to lay in the away terminal for an entire day until their number came upon the board to work back to their home terminal.

I know quite a few rails who only worked 10 or 12 days a month, not 20. Of course, sometimes they'd 22 or 25 days in a month, depending on traffic.

Interesting. Having been in the industry for over 20 years, I've long heard that the best days for T&E crews were the late 70's, early 80's. Indeed, average wages for full-time, class I railroaders were about the same as they are today (unadjusted for inflation), around 75-80K. The difference is that there are far fewer penalty and arbitrary payments for crews that added up really fast. For instance, I was told a couple of years ago by a now deceased former WM man that shortly after the Chessie merger incorporated the "Wild Mary", he was forced down to Cumberland, but occasionally was called on to work out of Hagerstown. He was paid a day to deadhead to Hagerstown (what, a 90 minute drive before I-68?), a penalty for working outside his home terminal, and another day's pay to deadhead home (now you'd get an hour's pay each way). That's how they made 80K back then.

Today, trying to get the company to pay totally legitimate claims for things like working outside assigned territory is worse than pulling teeth. Given that they were paying that kind of money back then with five-man crews, and hardly any contracting out of ancillary services, like some or all track work, the increase in productivity per worker today must be incredible.