I'm excited to hear you're writing some modern railroad fiction!

First of all, immediately go out and buy a copy of Linda Neiman's "Boomer". This chronicles in intimate detail her adventure in the " man's world" of 1970's-90's railroading on the Southern Pacific, from California to Texas. This book will really, really shed light on what it was like.

JOBS There are literally dozens of types of jobs on the postwar railroad, some were being created and some were disappearing. ON THE ROAD

ENGINEER: Specifically a high ranking employee. You had to work your way through being a brakeman and a fireman (due to unions, the fireman position stayed on well into the diesel era despite being no boiler to fire). Old "hogheads" or "hoggers" as engineers were known often were older than 45 and some were even veterans of steam still, despite steam having disappeared from most US railroads between 1952-9.

Their only duties of the era (unions kept you from doing someone else's work) was to safely operate the locomotives, and follow the movement orders as dictated by the CONDUCTOR.

CONDUCTOR Also a senior position, usually the most educated employee aboard a train. He has ultimate authority aboard the train, but still has to get movement orders from a DISPATCHER. He does all the paper work of sorting out timetables, waybills (each railroad car had a waybill with its load, destination and origin point) . he also talks with dispatch directly to make sure the train gets over the line safely.

FIREMAN Now an obsolete job, the fireman of the diesel era was basically an engineers 'copilot' and was a younger 20s-30s guy working up the ranks towards engineer. Nice engineers would often let the fireman operate the locomotives to get a hand for them and ease into the job of being an engineer. Cranky ones would tell you to sit down and shut up. Sometimes they also helped the brakemen out "on the ground" off the locomotive.

BRAKEMEN This would be the most common entry level job on a railroad. You spent most of your hours on your feet. You signalled the engineer with hand signals to ease the engineer to safely couple abd uncouple cars. You often went "in between" to couple and uncouple freight cars, and attach the brake hoses to each other. Brake hoses are found on both ends of every car and locomotive. They pull apart automatically when the cars are uncoupled and pull apart but must be attached by hand.

Brakemen in your era typically were 3 men, one in the locomotive with the fireman and engineer and two in the caboose with the conductor.

They would also climb up the end ladders of freight cars to set the brake wheel once the car is spotted on the industrial siding for the right industry, or in the yards. When cars needed to be shoved in front of a locomotive, brakemen had to ride the stirrups and lead the train, holding a lantern and looking out for hazards.

They have a VERY extensive language for hand signals they give engineers and they were not standardized between railroads. I learned the Southern Pacific from some old RR friends of mine, but they might be slightly or very different on the MKT. look these up, they're fun.

I'm on mobile, and about to go into class, but these are just jobs ON the train. There's plenty of others in maintenance of way (MoW), signal maintenance, station agents, shop crews, office jobs. Let me know what your character might want to work in and I can help ya. PM me abd I can help you in depth too after this