I Choo Choo Choose Money

After leaving the glorious field of IT I fell into Hirail work.

What is Hirail?

I hear you ask

Hirail is adding train wheels to regular trucks and other civil construction vehicles so that they can run on train lines.

I got my start on the Northwest Metro line starting at Bella Vista station driving a flatbed crane truck. We were there to install the walkways all along the tunnel. We had to use the crane to unload the pieces, weighing up to 200kg each, onto the brackets that we’d installed on the wall of the tunnel.

A repetitive job but still more exciting than working in an office.

Since that introduction I have done lots of different tasks, mostly on the Metro. I installed the cable trays along the tunnel, then pulled the cables, up on the viaduct section I installed the lights in the middle and the pipe carrying the water for the fire system.

It was so varied that even though there were long periods of time sitting around doing nothing I still looked forward to going to work.

And even though I have a full time job cooking rocks, I still get the occasional rail job. That is how I wound up sitting on the rail in Newcastle tonight.

Instead of a regular truck I’m now mostly into driving Hydremas, an articulated haul truck. They are little dump trucks with rail wheels that can basically go everywhere.

It costs about $1500 to get your rail tickets and dumper licence, a big fee you may think but tonight I will be pulling in roughly $1000 for a single night’s work. Do that a couple of weekends a year and that’s a tidy little supplement to a regular job.

You’ll pull long hours on the rail but you’ll get to see some pretty interesting places and it’s almost never the same thing each time. If you’re interested in some extra cash, let me know.