Railroads run on schedule, safety, and people who show up ready to work in any weather. That is a hard combination to hire for. Conductor seats sit open. Maintenance-of-way crews are short. Signal and mechanical shops cannot find people who pass the background check and stay past the first winter. If you run hiring for a freight or passenger railroad, you already know the pipeline is thin.

Veterans fill that gap better than almost any group. They are used to rotating shifts, remote sites, strict safety rules, and chains of command. Many already moved freight, ran heavy equipment, or maintained signal and comms gear in uniform. The catch is that their resumes do not say "conductor" or "signal maintainer." They say things like 88M, 12N, or 91L. This guide shows you how to read past the codes and hire the right people for rail work.

I am Brad Tachi, a Navy veteran and the founder of Best Military Resume. I built this platform after my own rough transition out of the service, and now my team works with veterans every day on how they present their experience. What follows is written for the person doing the hiring, not the person applying.

Why veterans fit railroad work so well

Rail is a safety-first, schedule-driven industry. So is the military. A service member who spent years following lockout procedures, doing pre-operation checks, and reporting every near miss already thinks the way the Federal Railroad Administration wants your people to think. You can read about the agency's safety oversight role at the Federal Railroad Administration, which sets the rules for track standards, signals, and crew certification.

Three traits show up again and again with veteran hires in rail. First, they handle odd hours and call-outs without quitting. Night shifts and being on call are normal to them. Second, they respect safety rules because rules in the service were tied to lives, not paperwork. Third, they work outdoors in bad conditions and do not treat it as a deal-breaker. Those three things are exactly what burns out a lot of civilian new hires in the first ninety days.

There is also a steadiness factor. The veteran unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is a tight labor pool, but the people in it tend to stay once they land somewhere that respects the work. Rail offers structure and clear advancement, which is what many of them are looking for.

Mapping military backgrounds to railroad roles

This is where most rail recruiters lose good candidates. The military job titles do not match your job postings, so the resumes get scanned and set aside. Your applicant tracking system racks and stacks them, and the veteran sinks to the bottom because the keywords do not line up. Here is how to translate the most common backgrounds into rail roles.

Conductor and train operations

Look for movement and transport backgrounds. The Army's 88N Transportation Management Coordinator plans and coordinates the movement of people and cargo across rail, road, air, and sea. That is dispatch and operations thinking. The 88H Cargo Specialist loads, secures, and moves freight, often by rail and at ports. Both understand manifests, load limits, and tight schedules.

The Army even ran its own rail program. The 88U Railway Operations job covered actual train crews, switching, and yard work. That heritage is real, so if a candidate's record mentions railway operations or a transportation unit, dig in. The Air Force 2T1X1 Ground Transportation career field also produces people who dispatch, route, and move heavy loads on a schedule.

Maintenance-of-way and track

Maintenance-of-way, or MOW, is about building and repairing track, roadbed, and structures. That is heavy construction work outdoors. The Army 12N Horizontal Construction Engineer grades, builds, and repairs roads, airfields, and earthwork using heavy equipment. The 12C Bridge Crewmember builds and repairs bridges and structures, which maps to bridge and structures crews. The Air Force 3E2X1 Pavements and Construction Equipment field runs graders, loaders, and compactors. All three are used to ballast-style work, surveying a worksite, and operating large machines safely.

Signal and communications

Signal maintainers keep the systems that control train movement working. That is electrical and electronic troubleshooting on safety-critical gear. The Army 25U Signal Operations Support Specialist installs, maintains, and repairs signal and communications equipment in the field. People from signals and electronics backgrounds read schematics, diagnose faults, and follow strict configuration rules. A signal department can train the rail-specific parts faster when the candidate already owns the electronics fundamentals.

Mechanical and equipment repair

Your mechanical shops keep locomotives and rolling stock running. The Army actually has a railway-specific repair job, the 88P Railway Equipment Repairer, which is about as close to a one-to-one match as you will find. For broader diesel and heavy-machine repair, the 91L Construction Equipment Repairer and the 91B Wheeled Vehicle Mechanic work on large engines, hydraulics, and drivetrains. They know preventive maintenance schedules and diagnostic work cold.

How to read a military resume for rail roles

A military resume looks different from what you usually see. It may list a job code, a unit, and duties written in service language. Do not let that throw you. Read for the work, not the words.

Start with scope. Did the person lead a crew? How many? What equipment did they sign for? A staff sergeant who ran a motor pool managed people, parts, budgets, and uptime. That is a foreman. Next, look for safety language. Phrases like "zero mishaps," "100 percent accountability," or "lockout-tagout" tell you this person already lives in a safety culture. Then look at the conditions. Field deployments, port operations, and 24-hour operations mean they handled exactly the environment your yard or right-of-way throws at people.

One more tip. The 88M Motor Transport Operator and similar transport roles often hold commercial licenses and clean driving records, plus experience convoying in tough terrain. That discipline transfers straight to safety-sensitive rail jobs that involve testing and strict rules.

Here is a quick example of how to decode one line on a resume. Say a candidate writes "Served as 88N, coordinated movement of 400 short tons of cargo across rail and motor assets for a 200-person unit, zero loss." Read it like this. They planned and tracked freight movement, which is operations and dispatch work. They handled 400 tons, so they understand load and capacity. "Zero loss" means accountability and accuracy. "200-person unit" tells you the scale they worked at. That single sentence is a strong fit for a dispatch or operations coordinator role, even though the word "dispatch" never appears.

Train your recruiters to do this on every veteran resume. The information you need is almost always there. It is just written in service language, not rail language.

Where to find veteran candidates for rail jobs

Posting on a generic job board and waiting does not work for this group. Veterans often do not search "maintenance-of-way" because they do not yet know that is what their experience is called. You have to meet them where they are and translate for them.

A few channels work well for rail. Base transition offices near installations with heavy transport or engineer units are full of people about to separate. Think Fort Cavazos, Fort Eustis, and other posts with strong transportation and engineer commands. Those offices want to connect their people with real employers, so a railroad that shows up with clear openings gets attention.

The DoD SkillBridge program lets a service member work at your company for their last few months in uniform while the military still pays them. It is a working tryout with no payroll cost to you, and an offer happens only after, on a separate decision. For rail, that is a smart way to test whether someone takes to MOW or shop work before you commit a seat. The Department of Labor's employer hiring resources are also a solid starting point for veteran recruiting.

It also pays to link up with the broader logistics and transport hiring world. If you already recruit drivers, you have done some of this work before. Our guides on hiring veterans as CDL truck drivers and for logistics and supply chain roles cover sourcing tactics that carry over to rail. If your shops also need diesel and machine techs, the same backgrounds show up in our guide on hiring veterans for heavy equipment and diesel roles.

The fastest path is a database built for this. BMR adds more than 1,000 new veteran profiles every month, and the platform has helped build over 60,000 resumes. That means you can search for the transport, construction-equipment, signal, and mechanical backgrounds that map to rail work, rather than hoping the right person finds your posting.

A few notes on safety rules and hiring

Rail is heavily regulated, and your safety-sensitive roles come with testing, certification, and background requirements. Veterans usually clear these well. They are used to drug-free workplace standards and to earning certifications. Conductor and engineer certification under FRA rules is something you train and certify for after hire, so do not screen out a strong candidate just because they have not done rail work before. The fundamentals they bring are what matter.

This is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm your specific FRA, hours-of-service, and background-check requirements with your compliance team. The point here is simple. A veteran's clean record, safety habits, and ability to pass strict checks are an advantage in a regulated industry, not a hurdle.

What veteran hires do for your turnover numbers

Rail hiring is expensive when it does not stick. Training a conductor or a signal maintainer takes months and real money. When that person quits in the first season, you eat the cost twice. This is where veterans tend to pay off for midsize railroads that do not have a giant recruiting budget.

Veterans are used to commitment. A four-year or six-year enlistment is normal to them, and they do not treat a hard job as a reason to walk after two weeks. They also adapt fast to structure, which means your onboarding sticks. You are not re-teaching basic work habits like showing up on time, following a checklist, or wearing the right safety gear. Those are already wired in.

There is a culture fit too. Rail crews run on trust and on knowing the person next to you will do their part. That is the same bond a service member built in a squad or on a ship. Many veterans say the camaraderie of a rail crew is the closest thing they have found to the unit they left. When the job feels like a team again, people stay. For a midsize operator, retention is the whole game, and this is a group that delivers it.

Build a steady rail-veteran pipeline

The railroads that win at this stop treating veteran hiring as a once-a-year career fair and start running it as a steady channel. Decide which roles map to which military backgrounds, train your recruiters to read past the job codes, and keep a pipeline flowing year-round so you are not scrambling when a crew comes up short.

If you want to reach veterans who already have the transport, heavy-equipment, signal, and mechanical experience your conductor, MOW, dispatch, signal, and shop roles need, that pool is here. Reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool and start hiring people who are built for this kind of work.