It's hard to picture that on the California Zephyr, but I've observed commuters in the 21st century in Diobingshan, Liaoning, China routinely getting on or off moving passenger trains of the Tiefa Coal Group without any pre-planning or supervision... sometimes they were moving considerably faster than 1 or 2 mph, too.

Sammy -

That is QUITE a story! My first thought was that she probably wasn't rewarded for that "save". And then I quickly thought, oh sure, this didn't even get mentioned because if it had, they might have asked where she learned to do that. A no-no? Me thinks perhaps it would have been so.

Les

Les, You can be quite sure that the BN recognized the extra thought and effort that I put in on my job. That's why I was the usual instructor in my little bailiwick, and why I was offered many more promotions than I accepted. The night before I was to take the buyout, I was summoned upstairs by all our bosses. I thought I must have gotten wrote up for something silly and that they were going to try to get rid of me for nothing instead of paying me --- They said, "We shouldn't be paying our best workers to quit". Once I explained about my sugar cane RR project, they wished me luck and said they wanted to come visit.

My hostler helper friend worked two 40 hour a week jobs the whole time I knew her, and had one daughter in Vassar and another attending Radcliff. I tried to look her up not long ago, and found out that her hometown had named a street for her.

One good reason that we both stuck with BN is that we WERE appreciated.

Sorry for the slow response.

We were the switch crew. We have other work to do... this inbound train is just setting out a block of cars and picking up a block of cars, then going back to their train, shoving into a track to get out of the way, then we still have our work to do. They're in our way and we have to wait on them.

Normally, the inbound train crew had rec'd instructions telling them how many cars to set out and which track.

And, usually, the inbound crew doesn't want to do the work because "there is a switch engine on duty, let them do our work". (I'd feel the same way if I was on the train, lol. I'm lazy).

If they're told they're going to have to do their own work, they "drag their rope"... they're not in a hurry... they want to go on overtime if it's anyway possible... that way they get a longer rest and make more money.
Plus, they know it pisses off everyone when they're poking along maliciously following the rules.
So, instead of them efficiently doing their job, getting done and out of our way and heading to the motel for rest... they drag things out and we're stuck in the yard office waiting for them to get out of the way~ which they're not in any hurry to do!!!

We still have all our work to finish~ they're screwing us as well as the railroad.

So, to expedite our going home in a timely fashion (getting a quit)... we'll do the work for them.

We only did it if it benefitted US. We wouldn't do it if the crew whined to us... OR to the dispatcher.
If the inbound crew got on the radio and were whining to the dispatcher to have us do their work... the switch foreman would call the dispatcher on the phone and shoot that idea down.
The dispatchers knew better than to try and overrule the switch foreman. He knew there was nothing worse than drawing the ire of the foreman~ who could gum up the whole works and have trains backed up all the way to Omaha trying to get through our terminal on their way to Texas, lol.