Cry Spotter it is most obvious that you have not worked for any of the larger railroads. For those of us that have or are; ,it gets a bit old to not know if you can even properly celerbrate your wedding anniversary, wife's birthday, kids graduation from school, or so many of the other things that a person working a "regular" work schedule job. Even if you have a lot of senority, you are more than likely still in "Chain Gang" service and never know when you might get called for work. For that matter you don"t know when you will get home because you never know how long you are going to wait transportation if you die on the law somewhere. And the rest clock starts running while waiting in a lot of cases. Even with the 12 hours of service rule; it is very hard top get a full 8 hours of rest. Most properities have a 2 hour call policy, even longer if you live further out from the terminal and in most cases at least in the large metro areas, thats the only place rails can afford to buy. I don't know many rails that don't have to have at least an hour to "wind down" from the events of the trip(including who knows how many near misses with the idiot, yes IDIOT, drivers that try to beat the gates). And then you have to have at least an hour to get up and "fed and watered" for the next trip. So let's put a scenario together. Get tied up at the home terminal before expiration of HOS(this time)Get home in an hour and a half, still early enough, so spend some time with the kids and wife.(say an hour) Take 1/2 hour to fall asleep. On the other end, get call for work 2 hrs. prior to expiration of rest period(completely legal under present calling and rest rules; even if it were not the company would do it anyway until they end up in court over the issue.)That leaves a MAXIMUM of 7 hours for sleep. Now that might be enough for some, but with RRing being a 24-7 job a lot of those calls come in the middle of the night and before long you have a bunch of under rested people out there trying to get their trains over the road with, in a lot of cases,too little track to handle the traffic. Then after 2 or 3 halfs of this scenario try and claim full rest and watch the company try and pull you up on charges. Oh, yes listen to them preach "quality of life to the public, it gets old real real quick. You don't even want me to talk about trying to eat enroute. Some of the Dispatcher instructions from the Operating managers,would be considered humorus if they were on a different topic. At least in Steam Engine days you could make something you brought along hot enough to eat. Andy