You have to apply online for almost all of the larger railroads. Smaller ones you might be able to go into their office and speak directly to a manager about employment opportunities.
There will be a drug test and a criminal background check.
All of the larger railroads will hire you as a conductor/brakeman if you want to enter into the transportation department to be on the trains. It's all seniority based so when you hire on you'll be on the bottom of the list or close to it if you're near the top of your class seniority wise. When your turn comes up to be trained as an engineer (the 'driver') you do your training. But ... just because you might be a qualified engineer doesn't mean your seniority can hold an engineer job.
Once you qualify you bid the jobs that your home terminal has. There are switch jobs that stay in the yard, ones that leave the yard but stay in the city, ones that go a little ways out of the city or the road jobs that go from A-B where you layover and come home on a different train. Most places, the road jobs are where the seniority is. It depends what kind of pay agreements you have as different railroads have different ones. CN in the U.S. is all hourly so a job in the city pretty much pays the same as a job on the road. Other ones are flat rate and others are mile based.
Assigned jobs have assigned start times.
Pool jobs and the spare boards are all based on a first out basis. When your name is at the top of the list and you are available and qualified for the next run ... you go. If the guy at the top of the list is not available or not qualified, then the 2nd guy gets called.
It's on call work, 24/7/365. So you have to always have your phone attatched to your hip if you are not on rest.
When you come in from a trip you go to the bottom of the list for the pool you are in. In the U.S. when you finish a trip you are unavailble for a mandatory 10 hours, Canada it's 8. Different railroads have different agreements. In the U.S. on CN once that 10 hours is served, you're free game to be called so you need to know if you're close to the top of your list or still down toward the bottom. In Canada on CN we can take 14 hours rest off of a city job and 24 off of a road job.
Yesterday I was 8 times down my pool and I got called because I was the first available qualified person for this one run.
You will start work at all hours on any day of the week. You don't really know how long you will be gone for ... here it's usually 24-40 hours if all things run smoothly. No set schedule, all on call ... you will miss holidays, special events and family gatherings ... but so does a long haul trucker.
If you're interested, do some looking into the agreements of the railroad you are interested in.
I should mention that if your seniority can't hold a job in your home terminal there are 3 things that can/will happen.
1. You get laid off until you can hold a job. This one is very common for new employees.
2. They force you to another terminal in your district where there is a shortage of employees. When this happens, they pay for your accomidations and usually give you a small travel allowance and a decent food allowance ... check into that as different roads do it differently.
3. You take a temporary clearance to another terminal in your district where you can hold a job and work there until your seniority can hold a turn in your home terminal.
The railroads have more than trains. There are clerical ( transportaion reporting, yard masters etc.) , mechanical (freight car mechanics, locomotive mechanics etc.), customer service jobs, signal and crossing maintainers, track maintainers, intermodal employees who load containers, electrician, facility maintenance ... many departments.
Most railroads have their own or owner operator contract truck drivers too. Those guys will bring in trailers from stores and warehouses and take them to the rail yards to be loaded onto the trains or take them from the rail yards out to their destinations. They railroads work with the trucking companies to try and lessen the amount of long haul trucking as one train can take over 300 trucks off the road. That is so much better on the environment, it's safer and it's less congestion and wear and tear on the roads.
If you have anything else you'd like to know, just ask.
