a day in the life of a rail crew

[miyakoji]

I remember stepping off the last train to my town, which was an administrative border, assuming the crew would have to sleep at that station.  Has anyone seen or read (in English or Japanese) about the schedules that railway employees work?  I assume it improves with seniority but they probably have to deal with bad hours to some degree throughout their careers.

[westfalen]

Sometimes the crew may spend the night and return in the morning. We have one such job (on QR called a 'tucker box job' because you have to take your tucker box of food with you for the next day) left in Brisbane, to Gympie, where the crew spends the night in a motel but sometimes, especially in the past, the railway might provide overnight quarters. It's also possible, and the most common situation here, that crews may be based at that station to work the first trains out and last ones in. Another possibility which we have on a few of our jobs is that they may return to their home depot by taxi.

 

I can't say that it's the same in Japan but running a railway is a similar process where ever you are.

[bikkuri bahn]

Basically westfalen sums it up there.  Specifically about Japanese railways, looking at a book I have, and the wikipedia entry, situations vary by size of railway/operation styles, etc., but overall the practice is similar across the board.  An example is: given a crew district responsible for say, 100 scheduled trains, the duties will be split up into packages of routes, called "koban", which are typically either regular day runs or late pm/early am runs involving an overnight stay.  These koban are arranged/slotted according to the work schedules of the staff, and are usually not changed much, except in times of unexpected staff absences or unscheduled maintenance of rolling stock.  Typically on a larger railway, it takes up to 5 months to get through a complete set of route packages, with all their permutations.  In a typical week, for example, on the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, a driver on days 1/2 will have an overnighter (counts as two days), on day 3 a daytime route package, and another overnighter days 4/5.  Days 6/7 will be holidays.  In any case, the number of roundtrips/day will not exceed 5, of course on longer routes (such as intercity ones) this will be less. Crew district terminals will have bunking facilties- I remember seeing on TV (a long time ago) beds at Tokyo's General Rolling Stock Center south of Shinagawa Sta. being equipped with automatic rising mattreses to wake up drivers before their shifts.

[miyakoji]

bikkuri, thanks, what wikipedia entry (en or ja) are you looking at?

[bikkuri bahn]

bikkuri, thanks, what wikipedia entry (en or ja) are you looking at?

 

here you go.

 

Cheers,

bb