Husband and Wife OBS teams?

[Ryan]

Someone just posted a picture from their SWC trip of their sleeping car attendant (Steven) in the Amtrak Fans Facebook group, and mentioned that his wife was working in the dining car.

I've never heard of a husband and wife working together on the same train, it sounds like an excellent way to make the long time away from home less difficult (assuming you don't have any kids). Does anyone know of any other couples that work like this? Presumably the company is OK with this, I wonder how hard it is for them to coordinate their schedules to make it work out.

 

[Railroad Bill]

We met a woman on the train who was OBS and her husband was an Amtrak engineer. We have a brief chat in the diner as she was off duty traveling on the CL but her husband was an engineer on another train.. do not remember which one? This was probably four or five years ago.

 

[Triley]

Don't be so shortsighted Ryan! What about people like me? I thought about what it'd be like to have my partner working as OBS too (the short answer is it would suck, unless we could land something like an Acela job, even if one was in the Cafe and the other in First Class, but given how in Boston our First Class jobs are high seniority due to the schedule they have, I'd say it's impossible for the first 10 years!)

In short, I'd imagine it'd be very tough to coordinate schedules, and would be very bad while you're on the extra board, as one could imagine.

 

[FormerOBS]

Over the years I can think of at least six couples who worked in onboard service on the Auto Train. I may be forgetting somebody. I don't feel comfortable mentioning names. One couple worked for years as a team in the dining car kitchen; others were diner SA's or SCA's. In some cases they met before coming to Amtrak, and in some cases they met at work. Several of them are still there. There have also been Conductors and engine service personnel who have met their spouses at work on the train.

Tom

 

[FormerOBS]

Scheduling can be difficult, as Triley suggests. Crews re-bid for jobs every 6 months. The more seniority you have, the better your chances of getting on the schedule you want. Sometimes married couples have had to bid on less desirable schedules (such as the ones that require more holidays on the road, for example) in order to increase their chances of staying on the same schedule together. When kids enter the picture, it can mean staggering the schedule so that one parent is always at home. Of course, this seriously reduces the couple's time together. Good, reliable alternate child care (a grandparent or a sister or brother, for example) can help a lot in those cases.

Tom

 

[andersone]

I love She Who Must Be Obeyed dearly, with all my heart and soul,, but I have no desire to work with her.

 

[Ryan]

Don't be so shortsighted Ryan! What about people like me?

Technically, I did only ask about other "couples", the ambiguity was on purpose.

 

[fairviewroad]

I love She Who Must Be Obeyed dearly, with all my heart and soul,, but I have no desire to work with her.

I hear you, although there are certainly quite a few pairs of jobs on an Amtrak train that wouldn't involve "close working conditions."

If I was on the "road" for long periods of time, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing my spouse on my break or at the end of a run. And if

they were getting paid too, all the better. But yeah, this is probably an unusual scenario.

 

[FormerOBS]

It seems that the most common arrangement is for one to work in one part of the train, such as the kitchen, and the other to work somewhere else, such as a sleeper. As in all of life, there's no one arrangement that is ideal for everybody.

Tom

 

[J-1 3235]

From my trip on the CL recently, one of the OBS people that boarded in PGH was the bride of one of the great guys that stepped up when the train had an extremely understaffed crew.

She was onboard to get to work in CHI, as she was part of the crew on one of the Western LD trains, and jumped right in to help.

Mike