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(c) 2026 Marsh Institute for Chaplains. Chaplain Resource Network is an initiative of the Marsh Institute for Chaplains. All rights reserved.
Railroad chaplaincy happens where the workday runs by the call board: in yard offices and crew rooms, aboard the head end at the away-from-home terminal, at the derailment site in the middle of the night, and in the towns where a railroader's family plans around a phone call that can come at any hou...
The phone rings at 2:40 in the morning, and ninety minutes later a crew is climbing aboard the head end in the dark. A railroad chaplain who stands in the yard office at crew change learns the rhythm of the railroad before anyone says a word: the engineer who has not slept a full night in a week bec...
Railroad families live by a phone that can ring at any hour. The call board decides when one part of the family disappears for a day or three, and the other part stays home holding the schedule together with tape. Dinner plans, ball games, and holidays all carry a silent asterisk: if the phone does ...
The call comes at 2:15 in the morning, and the crew van rolls out to the away-from-home terminal with the chaplain riding along. An engineer on this district has not slept well since a pickup tried to beat his train at a grade crossing last spring, and he saw the driver's face in the headlight. A yo...
Stand in a yard office at crew change, or meet an inbound crew at the away-from-home terminal, and you will meet a workforce that lives by the lineup: engineers and conductors called to work at any hour, families who plan their lives around a phone call, and crews who carry grade-crossing collisions...
