EBT Jim posted:So, these are mobile classrooms, that travel around the system? It's more cost efficient to go through this hassle, than to have employees come to a central location for training?
Here's why it's more effective to do mandatory instruction and training in the field instead of at central locations:
- Employees are absent from their assignments for less time, lessening the effect on crew availability.
- Duplicate payments are reduced. The employee scheduled for training gets the pay his assignment earns while he was marked off for training, and the extra board employee who actually works the assignment gets paid the same.
- Employee transportation, lodging and meals are a zero expense if training is held at the home terminal of the employee.
- Because training is usually a daytime activity, employees usually benefit from some extra family time. Normally, they are marked off for two days in order to be rested and available for their scheduled training day. Training counts against employee hours of service requirements.
- It is easier to select and schedule employees for training in the field so that the classroom space is fully utilized each day and critical assignments do not have to be annulled.
Of course, there is the overhead: travel expenses for the instructor(s), and -- if a classroom car is used -- it is expensive and annoying to transport it, as the scheduling of the car requires that it be expedited, and nobody at the railroad likes a one-car expedited movement. But, like it or not, a good Division will handle and transport the instruction car efficiently and professionally. If it needs to be in the head end of No.24 and there's only an hour to get it shut down, over to the depot, and switched into No.24, it'll be done. And, unless it has to be run as a special movement, the train it moves in was going to run anyway and the only actual extra cost is switching the car into and out of the train and spotting it at the new location, and even some of that might be absorbed by using a regularly assigned switch engine and the crew just gets less spot time to play dominoes.
