What Does a Railroader Do During Furlough?

Every so often someone asks what I do for work. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, this has been a tricky question! In my mind, I am still a railroader, but the reality is that I have not had anything to do with moving a train in over two years now. So, what does a railroader do with a furlough?

The answer to that question would be different for everyone. Initially, I was subject to seasonal furlough as business dried up at the end of 2019. This was expected and anticipated. My plan, as it is every year for seasonal furlough, was to enjoy the time off. Think about it, how many other places can you take four months off every year? I set aside money while I was working to cover my expenses while furloughed. Then I planned some activities to use up some of that free time. I booked a trip to Europe, planned to spend some time with my parents, and planned on spending the bulk of the time in the Lower 48 visiting friends around the west.

When my furlough started, I figured I would be back to work in March or April 2020. I started off furlough by working on a few projects around the house. None of them were major, but things that needed to be done. I got rid of the old, worn-out laundry machines at the fourplex and installed newer, more efficient machines. There were a few other small projects, but it was all easily accomplished pretty quickly, even just working on it a few hours per day.

When I was not working on the house, I caught up with some friends in Anchorage, whom I had not seen all summer, while in Skagway. Towards the end of the summer, I had also started dating L, and we made plans to get together a couple of times. My plan was to enjoy the time off, travel a bit, visit friends, spend time with L, then go back to work in the spring, and I started on that plan anyway.

In December 2019, I went to Idaho to live with a friend for a few months, and to put me a bit closer to L. She was living in northern Utah, just a couple of hours away. That may seem like a long way to drive just to see her, a couple of hours each way every time, but compared to the time it took to get there from Alaska, it was pretty quick! I made that drive a couple of times per week. In just a couple of months I managed to put 10,000 miles on my car, just driving back and forth between eastern Idaho and northern Utah!

As we all know, the world started to change at the beginning of 2020. Still believing a regular summer season was only a two-week quarantine away from being reality, I continued with all my planned furlough activities. L met my parents, then I took my mother and grandmother to Germany, where they are from. That was a wonderful trip, and despite COVID-19's increasing threat on the world, we saw little to remind us of what was happening. Why didn't I also take L? I planned the trip before she and I started spending time together, and while I later invited her, she felt it would be awkward to spend time in Germany with my family, whom she had only met a few days earlier.

In the few short weeks I was there, everything seemed to change. Being on vacation and just enjoying a part of the world that was new to me, I paid absolutely no attention to news or current events. So I was quite bewildered about the extensive questioning at US Customs about whether I had been in Italy and whether I had been ill at all during my trip. As I got caught up on the news after returning home, it became apparent that it would take more than a two-week quarantine to return to normal.

Shortly after returning from Europe, L and I got married. It was not the wedding we had been planning or hoping for, COVID-19 made sure of that, but we still felt like it was important to do, even if it did not turn out at all how we originally envisioned.

Around that time, the railroad extended the furlough, through late June. There was hope that a partial summer season may still happen, if things turned around soon with respect to COVID-19. I decided I had better look for another job, just in case. Ultimately that took us back to Alaska, where I took a position as the manager of a lighting store. My experience was neither in management nor in lighting, but I accepted it as a new challenge, and figured it would be temporary anyway, just until the 2021 season on the railroad. As it turned out, the 2021 season was not to be either, and so it has been a blessing to have a job I can stay at indefinitely until the railroad calls.

In early 2022, the railroad did finally call, and it seems that this is the year I get to go back! Furloughs are all different, and as I have learned recently, they do not always go according to plan. I am looking forward to more seasonal furloughs in the future and fewer prolonged ones. I intend to make a habit of filling furloughs with visits to family and travel overseas again, as I have in the past. L is also interested in doing that, and we are hoping to go to Europe together next winter.

Railroad Update: COVID-19

It is probably a safe assumption that everyone reading this has heard of Coronavirus at this point. I thought I would take a minute and explain how it is effecting the railroad and me. In short, it is having a negative effect, like on so many other industries.

White Pass & Yukon Route primarily moves tourists through a scenic part of Alaska and Canada. The vast majority of the tourists arrive in Skagway on cruise ships, which are basically not running at this point. Each cruise line has slightly different responses as to how they are responding to the Coronavirus and when they will be operating again. Due to both Canadian and US restrictions, none of them will be operating in Alaska at least until mid-July. Normally, our busy tourism season starts at the end of April, so that is already halfway through the season. Several cruise lines have announced that they have cancelled all their Alaska itineraries for the entire season, and some have announced start dates for much later than July, reducing the season even further. In the very best of circumstances, and assuming nothing else changes, it is looking like it will be a short and small season this year. Of course, all of that is subject to change. For much of April, things were changing on a daily basis. That has slowed down a bit, but I expect that there will continue to be changes to that anticipated schedule.

My employer, White Pass & Yukon Route has responded by cancelling all operations for May and June. They want employees returning from winter furlough to be available for work starting June 29th. This is much later than the original recall date in early March, which was given to us before the Coronavirus became such a big problem in the United States. Because of the reduced number of ships expected, and therefore the reduced passenger counts arriving in Skagway, the railroad has cancelled several services including the Carcross service and the Fraser Meadows Steam Excursions. Other services are expected to be operating on a reduced schedule. I was told that I should expect there to be no work for me this summer, because of where my seniority falls. They are currently expecting to need about eight people to operate trains, and I am currently number twenty-four on the seniority roster. Even if a few people senior to me choose not to return to work for some reason, it is unlikely that it would get to me. Basically, I will not likely be railroading this year, at least not at White Pass.

Right now everyone is hopeful for a better 2021 season. Some people are optimistic that everything will return to normal by then. I think that is unlikely, but hopefully 2021 will look a bit closer to normal than this year has so far!

Since it is unlikely that I will work for White Pass this year, I have been looking for other employment. I have been looking at other railroads, though few are hiring at the moment, and outside the railroad industry. Job searching is not much fun. I am also still waiting to find out whether White Pass will continue to pay for our health benefits. They normally continue to pay those during furlough, but furlough is usually only a few months each winter. With this longer one now, they have been telling us for eight weeks that they will have a decision about our benefits on Friday, and each Friday it gets postponed. The lack of communication has been frustrating, to say the least.

I will retain seniority at White Pass, and theoretically I will be able to return to work there as soon as there is work and it reaches my seniority level. When that will be exactly, no one really knows. I am hoping for 2021, but it really depends on how long it takes the tourism industry to recover from all of this.