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Vol. 11, No. 7, May 27, 1981
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Transportation Faces Challenge of Keeping Pace Via
Training
By Dave W. Austin
Practical Training: The Eastern Region's Maintenance of Way
Training Centre at Ottawa combines classroom training with practical demonstrations of rail maintenance
equipment.
The Canadian transportation industry today
faces the challenge of training personnel to keep pace with the rapidly evolving technology of the '80s.
Experts predict that every employee from the transportation sector, whether employed as truck driver, planner,
seaman, or aeronautical engineer will be enrolled during this decade in a training course. The transportation
industry will be obligated to spend millions of dollars and commit thousands of person years each year for training.
Various sectors of the industry have already created training centres with full-time instructors to
conduct extensive programs. Coupled with this institutional training is the on-the-job training
conducted on a daily basis throughout the country.
These centres and their training programs are in a state of constant evolution as new technology is introduced each
year.
Nick Racioppi has witnessed several changes in the railway business in his 30 years with Canadian Pacific Railway. A
maintenance of way foreman from Schreiber, Ontario, a small centre near Thunder Bay, Mr. Racioppi remembers the days
of six-man section gangs responsible for maintaining about six miles of track.
Advances in technology have brought about a minor revolution in required manpower and three or four men can now care
for more than 20 miles of track. Part of that revolution at CP Rail is the creation of four regional maintenance of
way training centres like the one at Ottawa. The Ottawa school's supervisor E.J. "A1" Matte has had 632
students graduate from his centre since its creation in 1978. "We began with the foreman and then progressed to
training some of the crews and, in some cases, we have brought foremen back for some refresher training" he
says. A course of three weeks' duration covers equipment, rail, ties, ballast, and even first aid and defensive
driving.
Mr. Racioppi and his fellow students divided their time between the classroom and a converted car shed which houses
small sections of track, switches, and the new equipment used for track maintenance. Not only the equipment has
changed. In the Schreiber area CP Rail has introduced continuous welded rail and concrete ties. "In one section
we have 30 miles of welded rail with no joints", Mr. Racioppi says. "There is also a portion of track where
we are experimenting with about 1,000 concrete ties. As a result, the track is easier to maintain and train crews say
that the trains are running easier".
CP Rail's Assistant Chief Engineer John Patterson says that changes in track maintenance have special benefits for
the railway. "By increasing the speed and efficiency of our track maintenance programs, there are fewer delays
to trains passing through areas being repaired or upgraded", he says. By running the trains with fewer delays,
the railway can increase its capacity, especially on the track leading to West Coast ports for shipments of coal and
grain.
CP Rail estimates that between 10 and 15 percent of its employees attend some type of a training course each year.
That amounts to a commitment of one percent of its man-days for training, exclusive of
on-the-job training.
Fortune magazine, in a recent article, says the top 500 companies in the United States spend $50 billion annually
for training of employees. No one will venture an estimate on cost for training in Canada's transportation industry.
But everyone seems certain that the need for institutional training is very real today and will likely be with us
for years to come.
(Dave W. Austin is with the public affairs department of Transport Canada.)
This CP Rail News article is copyright
1981 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and is reprinted here with
their permission. All photographs, logos, and trademarks are the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway
Company.
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