What an MTA Train Operator does

In revenue road service, train operators convey passengers over assigned routes. The notice adds two duties in the conditional rather than the indicative: they may open and close doors in stations and terminals, and they may make announcements.

That word may is worth noticing, because it is where this title and Conductor overlap and where the overlap stops. Doors and announcements are the conductor's core duties and the train operator's occasional ones, which is a fair sketch of how a two-person crew divides a train.

The customer-service ability on the notice — giving a passenger directions to a location — sits with the conditional duties rather than with the core ones. It is the only ability example on the document that involves speaking to a passenger at all.

In non-revenue road service, train operators operate work trains and revenue collection trains. In yard and terminal service they switch cars, prepare trains for road service, and operate trains between yards and terminals. They also convey trains into facilities for inspection and repair, and through car washes for cleaning.

A candidate picturing the job as a full shift of carrying passengers should read that list again. A substantial part of the description is about moving trains that are empty — into a wash, into a shop, out of a yard and onto a line — and the rules governing those movements are the same rules the deductive-reasoning questions are drawn from.

It also explains why information ordering is illustrated by a pre-trip inspection rather than by anything passenger-facing. Preparing trains for road service is named twice in the description, and a pre-trip inspection is what preparing a train looks like as a sequence of steps.

Four of the nine ability examples describe the view from the cab. Problem sensitivity is an object on the track. Spatial orientation is reading a subway map and knowing where stations are in relation to you. Number facility is calculating position from track markers. Visualization is the scene in the front window reappearing rotated in the rear-view mirror once you have passed it.

Two more describe the paperwork around it. Written comprehension is understanding written bulletins released by MTA New York City Transit — the standing instructions that change how a line is worked on a given day. Written expression is writing incident reports regarding unusual occurrences.

Between those six, the examination's picture of the job is coherent and quite narrow: read the instructions, know where you are, notice what should not be there, and be able to write down afterwards what happened. The notice's own phrase for the standard all of it serves is the safe, timely and proper operation of the train.

The physical activities and environmental conditions the notice lists are specific enough to change what the job looks like from the outside. Three of them do most of that work: "climbing and descending ladders on and off the tracks", "walking along elevated sections of track", and "remaining in a seated position for extended periods of time". The others fill in around those — moving between trains, catwalks and roadbeds, answering alarm bells, whistles, horns and radio conversation, telling coloured signal lights apart, working the manual equipment train operation involves, and lifting heavy equipment.

Two of those describe conditions people rarely picture from a platform. Walking along elevated sections of track puts part of the job outdoors and at height, and climbing ladders on and off the tracks describes getting to and from a train that is not at a platform.

The roster is the other half of the working conditions. Train operators may be required to work various shifts, including nights, Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, and the notice adds a sentence its sibling does not: train operators must be available to work overtime as required. Availability, in this description, is a condition of the job rather than a preference.