Feeling I should clarify some stuff about the rail life.
Mikkie here, your Octoling train driver in residence.
I ought to go on the record and clarify some things in the rail life since it has evidently become a point of interest here on this board, and it has been making me feel a little dreadful over the meager response to the AMA I had launched a couple months ago specifically to talk about this subject. In any case, here is probably what I should have brought up in that post! Not trying to be brutally honest here, and I want to try to be brief.
A lot of the things I will say are strictly applicable to Inkadia Rail, but some are universal across the industry with minor adjustment. I know the other legacy carriers (i.e. Ezo Railway, Splat Central, Western, Awacount Railway, and Southern Isles) do mostly the same thing, but I've heard that all the large private carriers (I use this term despite the fact that the legacies are also privatized and have been for 35 years now, except for some outstanding shares held by the shell company that resulted to assume certain debts - too long to cover here), third-sector carriers (e.g. Nerikara and Tsubokara), and also Inkopolis Metro (which operates the subway in Inkopolis) employ similar practices.
Big things: We are a union shop. That means you pay your dues. But in return, all of our work rules and policies are on paper. Operational guidelines are published by the carrier. Most importantly, any of the rules that dictate how the carrier can treat us are published in a booklet which is the result of very fierce negotiation between the Railway Workers Guild, Inkadia and the Inkadia Railway, and also based on the provisions of the Railway Business Act published by the Transportation Cabinet. But again, the legacies are private. None of our management are appointees from the government, and the biggest extent that the TC gets involved is that they step in only to enforce the RBA.
Onboarding: Most of the time, you are onboarded on platform duty or anything station-side (Green Window, information, etc.) Very rarely do you get hired off the streets as a conductor or a train driver unless they are actually desperate for labor (to put this in perspective, I, an Octo from Ezo, hired on as a station agent and did that for a short time before putting in, and that was in a self-proclaimed dearth of talent - an Inkling friend of mine was in my hiring class). Usually plat term will last you a year or two. Some stay because they like it. But the only way that they open conductor or train driver for off the street applicants is when they have exhausted the prospective internal candidate pool (again, thanks to a strict CBA). But say you make train crew. Conductor training is roughly six months of combined classroom and practical instruction. Driver training (done separately and after a term as a conductor) is an additional nine months, and even more for practical. Both involve strict examination (90 percent or higher is considered passing) and licensure before you can even touch a cab unsupervised. To put this into perspective, I have had seven years with the carrier as of this writing, and only three of those have I been driver qualified. That also factors being able to apply for conductor only a year in.
Scheduling: When I mention how tough our schedules are, this is what turns prospective applicants off. If you want normalcy like a regular desk job or the flexibility that Grizzco offers, this is not for you. Punctuality is everything on the rails. But once you are released from training (which has relatively normal shifts), here is how they look. If you are lucky, you get a four-day, 16-hour duty cycle. If your base is generous, you can get a working day of 8-12 hours, but five days on a week. If you are unlucky, you get an 18hr-24hr duty cycle with generally alternating days on and off, and the need to overnight at some very spartan crew bunks provided by the company for a rest period that is usually no longer than six hours. All of this is based off of seniority. Once a month, every single conductor and train driver bids their schedule for the following calendar month (based on when the trip starts): which trips they want to take on which day, as well as preferred days off, and this bid process is in seniority order. Seniority will always nab the "easy" trips, and those trips also tend to contain faster legs. Number one driver on my base's roster works Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays every single week from 05:00 to 22:00, and gets exclusively Special Rapid trips on the Central Line throughout that cycle. Meanwhile, I, with my seven years of time with the carrier, am only able to hold only certain Saturdays off (I do manage to get the ones I do want off), I work most every Sunday, and generally subject myself to the longer days (10:00-01:00 on a four-day cycle), and the trips I get throw me all over my base's normal operating area. If you are really, really unlucky (edit: or if you decide to; we do have some individuals who do), you have the magic status known as on-call reserve: you have a designated call window every single day where the carrier can assign you to fill in a vacancy on a trip originating from your base (there are rules to this outlined in our CBA, including whether we can declare to be on long call reserve - 2 day notice, short call - two hour notice, or terminal reserve - report to work at a designated time, and carrier can assign us on a whim for the window we are there), notwithstanding any trip that would violate your off-duty rest minimums.
Pay: couple things to tackle here. The big thing is that we crews are paid by the mile (OOC: what even are units for distance in this verse?) whilst we are considered "on the road" (i.e. in command of a train that will move anywhere on the line). This is one big reason why seniority loves Rapid services: they are long-distance and get their trips done in a short interval than an all-stops trip on the same. The nominal starting rate is 100g/mi with the possibility to top out at 225g/mi based off of seniority (OOC: 100g would be the rough equivalent of 1 USD). Do the math for the Tide Rider Line, a 21 mile loop that takes a little over an hour for one lap - every train does every stop on that line (edit: my base at Ajikawa gets no trips on the Tide Rider Line, but the Central Line is about the same in terms of distance). Top of scale will take home well over 4500g for every single lap they do on the line (I'd be somewhere around 3100g under the same conditions). Add on things like guaranteed hourly minimum for ground time (i.e. when we aren't in the cab - this rate works out to less than our nominal on-the-road rate), hardship pay for time worked during major commute rushes or special events (the Tide Rider Line is prime real estate if you want that Splatfest hardship), and premium pay for qualifications, and daily, one can expect to take home about 60kg on average (I'm around this ballpark with seven years of seniority). This is before factoring in the Extra Time rules involved when someone drops a trip and we decide to add it in our schedule without dropping a trip ourselves (which I will not explain). Some of my more-experienced colleagues have fatter paychecks because of this.
That's all I have for now. Any other questions, please ask. Ultimately, life on the rails is tedious, tends to be inglorious, days are long, days off are handed irregularly, but it pays for a modest 1DK condo right next to the crew base that can house both me and my partner (she used to work road crew but has since hopped over to local RTC), and even allow my sister to board overnight during Turfing season (i.e. weekends, and when school is not in session, though in practice she is one rail trip away whether she is going to school or to the city).