I'll try to do a better job for you and him both.. pools are boards of people.. I'll use where i work to best describe.. in Beaumont we have an East pool and west pool. East pool brings trains to Livonia, la from Beaumont, tx and West pool brings trains from Beaumont,tx to Houston,tx. Livonia and Houston are what we call away from home terminals. We stay in a hotel at those places anywhere from 10 hours when we're rested or until the next train is ready which could be over a 24 hour span of staying in the hotel. A VAC or PLD as he wrote assuming you knew what they were are a single vacation day or personal leave day. It's hard for us the get them on the day of. Most times we have to try to schedule a single day at least 4 days in advance if a slot is even available. Most of the time they are already filled up. These days are a paid day off.. now if we are unable to take a paid day off we can layoff (call in) sick which is not a paid day and you are docked so many points. After so many points in a 90 day span we are sent to investigation and wrote up and put on a probationary period. Layoffs on weekends and holidays are more points than the regular week but they add up really fast. Road crews are the pool boards that go from point a to point b stay the night and then go from point b back to point a(point a being home). Usually gone between 2-4 days at a time depending the location and back home between 10-24 hours before being called back out. We have no set schedule and work on call. We're subject to get a call as soon as 10 hours after clocking out(tying up). Once we get called to work, depending on the location, we have anywhere from an hour and a half to 3 hours to be at work. Hope that helped a little more.

This post was edited on 9/13/22 at 10:42 pm