Also, I would like to add that my earlier comments were greatly simplified. There are a lot of other parameters that can bite you, but I'm not going to spend a lot of time telling you a bunch of stuff about our agreements. It's too involved. Just be ready to go camping in some shithole if you do get hired out.

There are a lot of contract agreement quirks that take a long time to figure out. Most of us were not totally comfortable with our Yard and Road agreements for several years after hiring out. At least on the seniority district I work, our road agreement is germain to the 1956 agreement. There is still a provision for trainmen's rate of pay for manipulating ventilators on silk trains! (you google what a silk train is!)

OPPRMS brought up a memory that I will share: several years ago, I thought the grass was greener on the other side, and I was selected for an interview in Portland, Ore. for a signal maintainer's position on Uncle Pete. Halfway through the interview, I figured out that I would not be working in Portland. What they needed were people on the signal construction gang for a retrofit project covering Idaho, Washington and western Montana. I figured out that once they got warm bodies on the traveling gang, those guys out on the gang already would be free to bid in and fill the cushy maintainer's job in Portland.