Money · 1 of 5
What engineers make
Typical
$81,410
New engineer
$60,680
Senior on a busy road
$109,220
The national median is $81,410 a year and the bottom tenth are near $60,680. Almost none of that is a salary. Railroad pay is built from trip rates, mileage and overtime, so two engineers on the same railroad can be thousands of dollars apart purely because of what their seniority lets them bid on.