Operate and drive locomotives, diesel switch engines, dinkey engines, flatcars, and railcars in train yards and at industrial sites.

“Operate and drive locomotives, diesel switch engines, dinkey engines, flatcars, and railcars in train yards and at industrial sites.” is a supplemental task performed by Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers. Among the occupation's 28 rated tasks, workers place it 26th by importance (#3 most important). About 60% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Operate transportation equipment or vehicles. in Operating Vehicles, Mechanized Devices, or Equipment

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Observe train signals along routes and verify their meanings for engineers. · importance 5.0
• Signal locomotive engineers to start or stop trains when coupling or uncoupling cars, using hand signals, lanterns, or radio communication. · importance 4.8
• Pull or push track switches to reroute cars. · importance 4.7
• Observe signals from other crew members so that work activities can be coordinated. · importance 4.7
• Monitor trains as they go around curves to detect dragging equipment and smoking journal boxes. · importance 4.6
• Inspect couplings, air hoses, journal boxes, and handbrakes to ensure that they are securely fastened and functioning properly. · importance 4.5
• Observe tracks from left sides of locomotives to detect obstructions on tracks. · importance 4.5
• Operate locomotives in emergency situations. · importance 4.5
• Raise levers to couple and uncouple cars for makeup and breakup of trains. · importance 4.5
• Climb ladders to tops of cars to set brakes. · importance 4.4
• Receive oral or written instructions from yardmasters or yard conductors indicating track assignments and cars to be switched. · importance 4.4
• Inspect locomotives to detect damaged or worn parts. · importance 4.4
• Signal other workers to set brakes and to throw track switches when switching cars from trains to way stations. · importance 4.3
• Check to see that trains are equipped with supplies such as fuel, water, and sand. · importance 4.2

See all tasks on the Railroad Brake, Signal, and Switch Operators and Locomotive Firers page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-23794,
  title  = {Operate and drive locomotives, diesel switch engines, dinkey engines, flatcars, and railcars in train yards and at industrial sites.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-23794}
}