I am fairly certain that the Silverton Branch jobs were assigned by bid and seniority. If you were the successful bidder, the job was yours until the job was abolished. That being said, if the job worked 7 days a week, you worked seven days a week. In order to get a day off, you laid off for the day, and they found someone else to fill your slot. This is why some Silverton Branch crew members were pretty grumpy and tired by the first of October. I remember Carl Jack telling me how tired he was of waving at people.
How Al Lyons got on the work train is a good question. A guess is he laid off his regular job on 461-462 for the day to be on the work train. The work train would have been a nice break in the on-going monotonous routine of dealing with 500 tourists every day. It was probably a nice relaxing job for the day.
Back in the San Juan days it was the same. It was a 7-day-a-week job. The same crews worked every day. The train crews worked all the way from Alamosa to Durango and back the next day, while the engine crews changed at Chama. The Alamosa engine crews had a good deal, as they would work to Chama in the morning and return to Alamosa that afternoon, getting two basic day's pay. They then took the next day off, and another engine crew worked. For Durango crews it did not work out so well. The would work Durango to Chama, then lay over for the night, then return home he next day. This was because the two trains met between Chama and Durango at Carracas. But the same two engine crews worked back and forth 7-days a week - unless you laid off. The passenger engine crews did not make a lot of money, because the run was short - less than 8 hours each way, so little to no overtime was paid. It was the price to pay for having regular hours. Jim Pearce would get called to fire the San Juan off the extra board if the regular man laid off. He didn't care for it as he made less money that if he worked a slow freight train that took 10-12 hours to get over the road. He said that sometimes they would take the San Juan engine crews and use them to run a helper engine out of Durango to the top of Florida Hill at Falfa after they San Juan got into Durango. That made the day a good one as it was a second departure from a home terminal, which meant a second day's basic pay. So, the engine crew got paid for 2 days of straight time for the day, even though on the second trap they only went as far as Falfa.
Yep, follow the money, make the big bucks, go railroading.
