First, you should educate your students that the choices they make come with consequences. Some of these might be a life of being stupid, loosing out on certain job opportunities, etc.

The time to think about these things is before you become a drug user. I don't want to work with others that have substance abuse problems. This industry is dangerous enough as it is not worrying about if your co-workers are doped up on something.

Please encourage them to take on the lower paying jobs that the decisions they have made have might have set them up for. Perhaps they can prove their worth there and clean up their act and grow in that company or environment to the point that they are qualified for a better paying job with a little more life experience behind them.

If they have realized and accepted the mistakes of their past and are serious about this than they can talk to a RR HR department about opportunities. Most likely they will never cut it working for a RR due to the commitment and amount of work the job requires so they really are better to take a pass on working for the RR unless they have a passion or RR'ing, understand and perhaps even have experienced some RR'ing first hand and after that still are interested in working ANY 12+ hours of a given day on ANY of the give 365 days of the year.

More or less, RR'ing SUCKS, unless you love it and then is just sucks a little less. It's not the place to be if your just looking for "a job."

How many hours does the average train service employee work a year? Most a good 3000 hours per year or more. That's 900-1000 more than a 40 hr/week job. Of course they are going to make more money, but it's because they WORK MORE, not because of the pay rate.

Some Community Colleges offer classes about the transportation industry. Johnson County Community College Comes to mind.