Occupation / job
Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers pays $68,840 at the midpoint, 38% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
12,400 people work as Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers. That is enough for a functioning national market and not enough for a functioning local one — in most metros this is a few employers rather than a field you can move around inside.
Rail work suits people who can work a rotating roster built around a network rather than a working day, in a highly rule-governed environment.
How long it takes to become one of the 12,400 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers earn under $57,820 and a quarter over $76,590: 1.3x, and $18,770 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
Even the bottom quarter of Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers earns $57,820 — $27.79 an hour and $7,800 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you need to live where the work is not — rail employment is tied to a fixed network and seniority governs the roster.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 12,400 people employed as Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
At 1.3x between $57,820 and $76,590, this is a narrow distribution. $68,840 is a reliable number to plan around, which is worth something — but so is knowing that outperforming the field will not be paid for.
Put in money rather than ratios: $57,820 at the 25th percentile, $68,840 at the midpoint, $76,590 at the 75th. $18,770 separates the quarter of Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $57,820 and $76,590 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $68,840. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $7,750; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $18,770.
The midpoint sits high inside its own range: $11,020 above the $57,820 bottom quarter but only $7,750 below the $76,590 top quarter. Most of the distance in Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers is spent climbing out of the bottom, and once you are past the middle there is not much further to go.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $33.09 at the midpoint for Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers, $27.79 at the 25th percentile and $36.82 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers. The self-employed are excluded, so $68,840 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers, the hourly figure is $68,840 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else