What does a Metro-North Railroad Conductor do?

being a railroad conductor uh is really a great position it gives you opportunity to work with people to make a difference in our society being a conductor is a great job it's a lifetime career best part of the job is i'm outdoors all the time i love being outdoors so my favorite part about being a conductor is the flexible hours [Music] we have different types of conductor jobs you have passenger conductor you have yard conductor you have flat conductors so a passenger conductor what they do is they manage the train they provide customer service and safe and efficient travel for our passengers a yard conductor would be doing work in a yard putting trains together taking trains in and out of shops in order for them to get serviced and a flag conductor uh is responsible for people that work in our infrastructure to keep them safe and out of harm's way before i came from the railroad i was pursuing nursing i didn't know about the railroad the thing that surprised me the most is that finding out how much a conductor does because me being from outside on the street i thought a conductor only collect tickets but as i learned and i trained i noticed that conductors know a lot and they do a lot that people don't see when they're out there just collecting tickets all right the training that we provide here at metro north is excellent i came here i had no experience no knowledge of the trains and i was able to get through so it's nothing hard it's challenging you're going to have to study you're going to have to put in the time you're going to have to put in the effort it's not going to be easy but if you want it you will achieve it as a passenger conductor many times you'll run into a passenger with special needs or a lost passenger or child that's lost or someone who needs assistance and you're giving them that special attention to get them where they need to go safely so it really is a job that has impact on people's lives and you can really be proud of those customer touch points that you that you have that really help people and make them you know get them to where they need to go safely and securely in addition to working on passenger trains you can also come and work here in the yard each yard has a yard crew that's comprised of an engineer a conductor and an assistant conductor also known as the brakeman however the conductor is the most vital role of the yard crew because they are the leader working as a conductor has been a great opportunity for me not only did i get to learn a lot about an entire new world of things here at the railroad but i got to employ many of my skills customer service talking to people being a leader these are all things that a conductor does in addition there's a really great community here with your brothers and sisters as part of the union and there's lots of opportunity to move up you can work in training compliance or other departments above if you're interested in pursuing a higher up career here with the company one of the other benefits of metro north is the benefits you can't beat that as a single mom that allowed me to provide a nice life for my two children and not have to worry about health benefits or whether or not i was going to be you know worry about having a position later on well the role of the conductor flag is to protect the railroad from the contractors protect the contractors from the railroad we have outside contractors come in on on our territory have a very limited knowledge base as to what's going on and it's our obligation to make sure that they can accomplish their job as safely as possible to be a conductor you don't have to have any specific skill other than the willingness to learn our training our programs provide you with all the information that you would need to be successful in the position but i will say personality wise uh you have to be a person that's willing to take on responsibility you know with a high level of responsibility you get you got a large sense of fulfillment in being able to do what you love you get to interact with a bunch of people and at the end of the day your job is to make sure that other people are safe and i think it takes a very particular kind of person to be able to accept that role to have other people put their lives in your hand to make sure that they get to go home safe at the end of the day i'm now the director of operations training i started as a conductor in my career and all of that knowledge is a great foundation to assist you into moving to different positions within the railroad so there really is no limit to where you can go and like i said conductor is a uh is a great place to start i think metro north is a great place to work i'm approaching my 10-year career here i started off in the uh the maintenance away department came over to become a conductor i absolutely love it before coming to metro north i worked a normal boring nine-to-five office job and though i enjoyed my position i definitely wanted something more and i found that here at metro north

Channel: MTA Today

Views: 27,279

Keywords: MTA, Metro North Jobs, railroad

Id: Zs70UXkAH5g

Length: 5min 10sec (310 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022