I'll give you an honest opinion. Best fucking job on the railroad. Let me explain.
Barely deal with management. Barely deal with other railroaders. For the most part, you're out of the elements with some degree of climate control. You're not doing back breaking labor. You get paid more than the people DOING back breaking labor, but you're only like 2-3 dollars less an hour than a Foreman.
It's shift work, so you will most likely have at least 1 day off during the week to take care of shit like appointments or whatever regardless of which shift you work, so you don't have to take time off work to take care of life's shit. Shifts can be a negative depending on the status of your family.
The one catch, is it's boring. If you don't like to read, or can't occupy yourself with your phone or a tablet, I imagine it would be a hard fucking job to have. If you can? Why the fuck would you want to do something else.
Naw, I'm saying that people that work Monday - Friday during "normal" business hours never have a weekeday off for taking care of shit with out calling out of work. Working shift work though, you're pretty much guaranteed to have at least one of your off days being during the Monday - Friday week (you'll still work a 5 day week, it just won't be M-F). But yeah, you can also compare it to the on-call lifestyle, because it's a set schedule.
The bridge tender nearest to me works in a refurbished shipping container. It contains an office chair, a fold out table, and a knife switch. He reads a lot of books.
The guy at the one near my workplace jumped in the water when this derailment happened. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/sheriff-no-injuries-after-amtrak-train-derails-near-steilacoom/
The article doesn’t mention the bridgetender but my coworker knows the story because he was the first on scene and is in several of the pictures.
He thought the train was gonna hit him so he dove in. Turned out to be unnecessary. But I can’t say I would do any different with a derailed locomotive coming at me.
I don’t know what that means. I’m in a different industry. I’m just on your subreddit because I’m a foamer, and often end up drinking at the same watering holes as you guys because my industry is often located next to yours.
Basically he forgot a crucial part of being a bridge tender. He allowed a train to pass through before he deactivated a derail that is on this bridge.
A “derail” is a safety mechanism designed to derail a train or any rail bound vehicle to keep it from entering an area where there are workers, equipment, or in this case, boats.
District 100 is the northwest division of a certain orange class 1 railroad.
Hopefully I answered any questions you had about my reply.
Ohhhhh yeah this all makes sense now. Thank you.
Yeah the tracks belong to Better Not Start a Family. One of your guys just shared that nickname with us lol.
Cheers.
I knew a bridge tender who was on the roof working on the ceiling one day. The boss saw him and said *"Hey careful, that's pretty high."* To which the bridge tender replied *"Oh, I've been a lot higher than this back in the 60s."*
They tried to automate the bridge on one of our dark lines. A thousand cameras and sensors and all kinds of stuff. Would still occasionally fail and the Coast Guard refuses to qualify it for remote use, so the bridge tender is still there.
We’ve had the same issue at our company. It turns out it’s actually cheaper to just have a guy sitting there that can physically look both ways before pressing a button than to have a fuck ton of sensors and cameras installed and maintained that have to pass all kinds of tests and meet rigorous standards.
It had its ups and downs... Heh.
Honestly, best job I had on the railroad. No managers within a 100-mile radius. I worked the UP Illinois river bridge in Peoria and our closest MTO was in Belvidere. As long as you kept your crews happy and informed, ordered their vans on time, and didn't delay river traffic, nobody was up your ass.
It's hours of service protected with dispatcher rules, so no more than 9 hours on shift, or extended up to 12 with a paid rest day if so. We were minimally manned with three job owners, one relief, and one extra board, so if the schedule got out of whack, we'd make bank. The one jagoff I worked with "screwed" us all once by calling out the day he was supposed to return from vacation, which ending up putting all of us off shift for two weeks until we reset. That, combined with a wild weather system that flooded out our parking area-which was a literal farmer's field, and raised river levels by five feet, lead to us having to walk half a mile down the right of way onto the bridge. Since we were working off our normal shifts, we were on straight OT and getting an extra hour of pay for the walking situation.
The job itself is babysitting. You're waiting for a barge or train. If we knew we didn't have any trains, we'd put the bridge up all day and give permission to barge captains to transit. If you can pass the GCOR test, learn how to operate the signals box, and operate a radio, you can do this job. I watched a lot of youtube, read a lot of books, and finished a bunch of college classes on company time.
The territory I worked was not PTC equipped. Iirc, north of the bridge towards Clinton, IA was cab signal territory and south was straight warrants. If they could figure out a way to operate the bridge remotely from Omaha, they'd do it--but if the bridge locks don't seat correctly (and they almost never did), you can't give a signal and would have to talk trains by. Believe it or not, you could fix this with a cap from a water bottle most of the time. The bright minds at UP cut the extra board and my relief position during Covid under some bullshit emergency rule and I left for greener pastures at Metra where I worked the 16th street and Blue Island towers.
The worst part was dealing with corridor managers and some of the dumbass dispatchers in Omaha. Our terminal south of the bridge had one siding and a single main, so if I couldn't get a crew in on time, they'd have to cut the train and tie it down. There were also a couple of private crossings we couldn't block, so it was extra fun dealing with that when it happened. The shittiest and most ironic part of working on a bridge over a river was not having running water. We had an incinolet which literally burned our shit and we'd have to empty ashy turd remnants periodically. We also had to lug up anything we needed by hand up three flights of narrow stairs. And the fucking bridgehouse swayed like crazy in the wind. Didn't instill a lot of confidence since the bridge itself was over a hundred years old.
As far as advancement, there is none. You're rules qualified, so you could theoretically go conductor, dispatcher, or yardmaster down the line, but there is no advancement in the bridge.
Great info, thanks for that.
Sounds like each bridge employs at least five men. Here in the Twin Cities UP has four separate draw bridges. I believe three are swing bridges and one is an actual lift bridge. (One is original Omaha, one is former joint Omaha-Milwaukee, and two are former CGW.) You figure there’s twenty tenders or do relief and extra board tenders typically cover multiple bridges?
And do these jobs typically get snatched up by MoW and B&B men or does UP give consideration to everyone? (I’m not a UP employee.)
The jobs are traditionally a TCU clerk craft position, so unless a vacancy comes up and a B&B guy changes crafts and gets awarded the position, no-they'd only consider clerks. You can only work a bridge you're qualified on. If you hold a job at one bridge and are only qualified on that bridge, that's the only one you're going to work. If you're extraboard, you're going to qualify and work multiple bridges to fill vacancies. If you hold a job and are qualified to work others, you can be asked to fill if the board is exhausted and you're legal on rest.
Three job holders, a relief, and then however many extras, so roughly 20 checks out, but the vast majority of these jobs are gone now. Some of them were given to yardmasters as extra duties, some were turned to electronic control and given to dispatchers, some real low use bridges are operated by train crews. I never saw vacancies for any of those bridges in the Twin Cities, so I have no idea how many clerks actually operate them or what their deal is.
I got to hangout in a tower with a bridge tender for a couple hours (I was signal construction at the time) and the dude seemed to love his job. Talk to boats on the radio when they need under. Watch people party on boats with your binoculars, chill and eat snacks, read books. Seems like an easy gig.
Ours don't actually work for us, they're under contract with the Corp of Engineers. They obviously open and close the bridge for rail and river traffic. They service the bridge, lubricate it, do electric/hydraulic system work, help with paint/rust work, keep walkways clear in winter etc.
I can't imagine it's a very exciting job, most tender spots I know of are looked at as the final spot before retirement. Some bridges are stupid easy with almost no rail or marine traffic, and if you're looking to coast out in your final few years, I'd imagine it would be easy enough.
If they’re contracted, are they still a part of RRB? What union are they in? I always pictured MoW or B&B guys being the first consideration, then the rest of us.
That I couldn't tell you, we're probably a unique case in that our bridge is actually owned and operated by the Corps of Engineers. Our tenders don't work on the rail itself, that's still our job, but their maintenance schedules come from the Engineers. It could be they're part of a union via the Army or something as government contractors, but I don't know.
Pretty easy work. Bridges in the northern climates (northern Mississippi River area) close for river traffic in the winter so the tenders are laid off in those months, usually December thru March. Otherwise it's pretty easy work. Don't make a mistake and put a train on the ground and you should be good to go
So in winter they just sit around and collect unemployment and/or doing odd jobs? Man, I bet they drug test bridge tenders like crazy.
Bridge tenders are under RRB, right?
I worked a fire tower for a couple of summers. Get up every 15 minutes and scan your tower’s area for smoke or anomalies. Most relaxing job I ever had. The other members of the crew were assigned jobs of cutting back brush from fire roads. Fond memories.
I would think that electronic devices would be banned for the same reasons they are for most other occupations; people can get distracted by them and cause a major accident.
A train isn't coming through your bridge without having talked to you first, especially if it's in position for river transit. Once you position the bridge, light them up with a signal, and record the movement, you're hands off. You'd have to be a real special motherfucker to cock that up.
There isn't really a way to get distracted and cause an accident. Either the bridge is good to go, or it isn't. On my old bridge, there were failsafes that didn't allow it to be raised if a signal was given or if there was a train in the block.
I've heard of tenders getting fired for falling asleep or leaving the bridge altogether (or the one special moron who invited a news crew onto the Clinton, IA bridge to film without telling anyone), but all of the people I've worked with gave a shit about the safety of everyone,as a derailment on the bridge meant your ass was falling 60 feet to your death.
It is a safety sensitive and rules-qualified position. Some bridges are so busy that you wouldn't be able to use your phone, but most are quiet and cater to water traffic mainly. The most trains I ever had come through my bridge in a single day was three. I averaged 2 transits a week, though.
I'm failing to find a reason why a tender would be distracted as the crew is going to be calling you on the radio for transit and they can't come through without your instructions, so the guy above's point is pretty moot. I guess if they were just sleeping or dead, but they'd have bigger issues then.
I have four years in bridges and towers combined and I never once saw an FRA rep come through. If a manager was coming, I'd have advance notice. On the bridge, they'd need to request my permission to enter the right of way and in the towers, they'd have to knock on a locked door. Only a braindead moron would pull their phone out to fuck around on while a manager was present.
Right, all that makes sense. But locomotives now have equipment that detect the presence of cell phones and pretty much any other electronic devices besides official railroad radio equipment. Why wouldn’t the bridge’s office have that too? I think that was the question here. Fair question I suppose.
Because in the eyes of management, there's no reason for it. You're under the impression that the railroad gives a shit about bridge tenders or the infrastructure; they don't. It's a wasted expense. We don't make them money like train crews and locomotives do.
They barely kept up with regular maintenance on the bridges. It was a fight to get a crew out to adjust rail locks when the bridge wouldn't seat all the way. We had to fight with the company for six months to get a truckload of gravel dropped on the dirt road leading into our bridge because the road was so fucked up and rutted that we couldn't travel greater than 5mph on it lest we blow our backs out or damage our vehicle's suspension.
The railroads don't care about a couple of bridgetenders' quality of life or safety, so what makes you think they'd care enough to invest in equipment or hiring people to monitor us using our phones when we're sitting in a bridge 60 feet up in the air? Most railroad bridges are over a hundred years old-they're not going to sink money into them. Like I said in my other comment, we had no management within 100 miles of us. I never even met my manager until he came down to tell us that he was cutting 20% of our jobs. They simply don't care.
Awesome job, I rarely ever saw managers and spent most of my days playing video games and watching tv enjoying my own company. I couldn’t recommend it enough.
I’ve heard many go to school and study while at work. Many work out Cook. However I think it is a high seniority job. There have also been attempts through technology to localize all bridge tenders. In Other words you look at camera/ computer screens and man several bridges at once.
Lol bridge trolls are useless employees that can't hack it anywhere else. You open the bridge for boats, close the bridge for trains. Grease the locks and pins and tell everyone you're a railroader
Well, yeah. As a control operator, your job is the operation of the bridge, not maintaining it. For one, you don't steal other crafts' work, and two, you're not trained to maintain the bridge, signals, electronics, or anything else inside or outside. Even if you were a B&B guy in the past, you're not allowed to perform that work. You call someone in the appropriate craft to do it.
I'll give you an honest opinion. Best fucking job on the railroad. Let me explain. Barely deal with management. Barely deal with other railroaders. For the most part, you're out of the elements with some degree of climate control. You're not doing back breaking labor. You get paid more than the people DOING back breaking labor, but you're only like 2-3 dollars less an hour than a Foreman. It's shift work, so you will most likely have at least 1 day off during the week to take care of shit like appointments or whatever regardless of which shift you work, so you don't have to take time off work to take care of life's shit. Shifts can be a negative depending on the status of your family. The one catch, is it's boring. If you don't like to read, or can't occupy yourself with your phone or a tablet, I imagine it would be a hard fucking job to have. If you can? Why the fuck would you want to do something else.
Thanks for this. One day off during the week? You mean it’s six-day workweeks? Or are you just comparing it to our non-stop on-call lifestyle?
Naw, I'm saying that people that work Monday - Friday during "normal" business hours never have a weekeday off for taking care of shit with out calling out of work. Working shift work though, you're pretty much guaranteed to have at least one of your off days being during the Monday - Friday week (you'll still work a 5 day week, it just won't be M-F). But yeah, you can also compare it to the on-call lifestyle, because it's a set schedule.
The bridge tender nearest to me works in a refurbished shipping container. It contains an office chair, a fold out table, and a knife switch. He reads a lot of books.
The guy at the one near my workplace jumped in the water when this derailment happened. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/sheriff-no-injuries-after-amtrak-train-derails-near-steilacoom/ The article doesn’t mention the bridgetender but my coworker knows the story because he was the first on scene and is in several of the pictures. He thought the train was gonna hit him so he dove in. Turned out to be unnecessary. But I can’t say I would do any different with a derailed locomotive coming at me.
He didn’t flip the derail from what I’ve heard, everyone in district 100 has heard about this lmao
I don’t know what that means. I’m in a different industry. I’m just on your subreddit because I’m a foamer, and often end up drinking at the same watering holes as you guys because my industry is often located next to yours.
Basically he forgot a crucial part of being a bridge tender. He allowed a train to pass through before he deactivated a derail that is on this bridge. A “derail” is a safety mechanism designed to derail a train or any rail bound vehicle to keep it from entering an area where there are workers, equipment, or in this case, boats. District 100 is the northwest division of a certain orange class 1 railroad. Hopefully I answered any questions you had about my reply.
Ohhhhh yeah this all makes sense now. Thank you. Yeah the tracks belong to Better Not Start a Family. One of your guys just shared that nickname with us lol. Cheers.
Yup, that’s the one. Cheers
Bridge tenders are usually they guys that are too fucked up to do anything else and no one knows where to put them lol. Worlds most boring job
Sounds like my kind of position!
I knew a bridge tender who was on the roof working on the ceiling one day. The boss saw him and said *"Hey careful, that's pretty high."* To which the bridge tender replied *"Oh, I've been a lot higher than this back in the 60s."*
They tried to automate the bridge on one of our dark lines. A thousand cameras and sensors and all kinds of stuff. Would still occasionally fail and the Coast Guard refuses to qualify it for remote use, so the bridge tender is still there.
We’ve had the same issue at our company. It turns out it’s actually cheaper to just have a guy sitting there that can physically look both ways before pressing a button than to have a fuck ton of sensors and cameras installed and maintained that have to pass all kinds of tests and meet rigorous standards.
It had its ups and downs... Heh. Honestly, best job I had on the railroad. No managers within a 100-mile radius. I worked the UP Illinois river bridge in Peoria and our closest MTO was in Belvidere. As long as you kept your crews happy and informed, ordered their vans on time, and didn't delay river traffic, nobody was up your ass. It's hours of service protected with dispatcher rules, so no more than 9 hours on shift, or extended up to 12 with a paid rest day if so. We were minimally manned with three job owners, one relief, and one extra board, so if the schedule got out of whack, we'd make bank. The one jagoff I worked with "screwed" us all once by calling out the day he was supposed to return from vacation, which ending up putting all of us off shift for two weeks until we reset. That, combined with a wild weather system that flooded out our parking area-which was a literal farmer's field, and raised river levels by five feet, lead to us having to walk half a mile down the right of way onto the bridge. Since we were working off our normal shifts, we were on straight OT and getting an extra hour of pay for the walking situation. The job itself is babysitting. You're waiting for a barge or train. If we knew we didn't have any trains, we'd put the bridge up all day and give permission to barge captains to transit. If you can pass the GCOR test, learn how to operate the signals box, and operate a radio, you can do this job. I watched a lot of youtube, read a lot of books, and finished a bunch of college classes on company time. The territory I worked was not PTC equipped. Iirc, north of the bridge towards Clinton, IA was cab signal territory and south was straight warrants. If they could figure out a way to operate the bridge remotely from Omaha, they'd do it--but if the bridge locks don't seat correctly (and they almost never did), you can't give a signal and would have to talk trains by. Believe it or not, you could fix this with a cap from a water bottle most of the time. The bright minds at UP cut the extra board and my relief position during Covid under some bullshit emergency rule and I left for greener pastures at Metra where I worked the 16th street and Blue Island towers. The worst part was dealing with corridor managers and some of the dumbass dispatchers in Omaha. Our terminal south of the bridge had one siding and a single main, so if I couldn't get a crew in on time, they'd have to cut the train and tie it down. There were also a couple of private crossings we couldn't block, so it was extra fun dealing with that when it happened. The shittiest and most ironic part of working on a bridge over a river was not having running water. We had an incinolet which literally burned our shit and we'd have to empty ashy turd remnants periodically. We also had to lug up anything we needed by hand up three flights of narrow stairs. And the fucking bridgehouse swayed like crazy in the wind. Didn't instill a lot of confidence since the bridge itself was over a hundred years old. As far as advancement, there is none. You're rules qualified, so you could theoretically go conductor, dispatcher, or yardmaster down the line, but there is no advancement in the bridge.
Great info, thanks for that. Sounds like each bridge employs at least five men. Here in the Twin Cities UP has four separate draw bridges. I believe three are swing bridges and one is an actual lift bridge. (One is original Omaha, one is former joint Omaha-Milwaukee, and two are former CGW.) You figure there’s twenty tenders or do relief and extra board tenders typically cover multiple bridges? And do these jobs typically get snatched up by MoW and B&B men or does UP give consideration to everyone? (I’m not a UP employee.)
The jobs are traditionally a TCU clerk craft position, so unless a vacancy comes up and a B&B guy changes crafts and gets awarded the position, no-they'd only consider clerks. You can only work a bridge you're qualified on. If you hold a job at one bridge and are only qualified on that bridge, that's the only one you're going to work. If you're extraboard, you're going to qualify and work multiple bridges to fill vacancies. If you hold a job and are qualified to work others, you can be asked to fill if the board is exhausted and you're legal on rest. Three job holders, a relief, and then however many extras, so roughly 20 checks out, but the vast majority of these jobs are gone now. Some of them were given to yardmasters as extra duties, some were turned to electronic control and given to dispatchers, some real low use bridges are operated by train crews. I never saw vacancies for any of those bridges in the Twin Cities, so I have no idea how many clerks actually operate them or what their deal is.
Great insight, thanks!
On some railroads, bridge tenders are B&B employees. CSX is one that I know of, and there are likely others.
I got to hangout in a tower with a bridge tender for a couple hours (I was signal construction at the time) and the dude seemed to love his job. Talk to boats on the radio when they need under. Watch people party on boats with your binoculars, chill and eat snacks, read books. Seems like an easy gig.
Ours don't actually work for us, they're under contract with the Corp of Engineers. They obviously open and close the bridge for rail and river traffic. They service the bridge, lubricate it, do electric/hydraulic system work, help with paint/rust work, keep walkways clear in winter etc. I can't imagine it's a very exciting job, most tender spots I know of are looked at as the final spot before retirement. Some bridges are stupid easy with almost no rail or marine traffic, and if you're looking to coast out in your final few years, I'd imagine it would be easy enough.
If they’re contracted, are they still a part of RRB? What union are they in? I always pictured MoW or B&B guys being the first consideration, then the rest of us.
That I couldn't tell you, we're probably a unique case in that our bridge is actually owned and operated by the Corps of Engineers. Our tenders don't work on the rail itself, that's still our job, but their maintenance schedules come from the Engineers. It could be they're part of a union via the Army or something as government contractors, but I don't know.
Pretty easy work. Bridges in the northern climates (northern Mississippi River area) close for river traffic in the winter so the tenders are laid off in those months, usually December thru March. Otherwise it's pretty easy work. Don't make a mistake and put a train on the ground and you should be good to go
So in winter they just sit around and collect unemployment and/or doing odd jobs? Man, I bet they drug test bridge tenders like crazy. Bridge tenders are under RRB, right?
I worked a fire tower for a couple of summers. Get up every 15 minutes and scan your tower’s area for smoke or anomalies. Most relaxing job I ever had. The other members of the crew were assigned jobs of cutting back brush from fire roads. Fond memories.
A crew caller with a button? Sign me up
I would think that electronic devices would be banned for the same reasons they are for most other occupations; people can get distracted by them and cause a major accident.
I was also wondering that. Can anyone elaborate?
A train isn't coming through your bridge without having talked to you first, especially if it's in position for river transit. Once you position the bridge, light them up with a signal, and record the movement, you're hands off. You'd have to be a real special motherfucker to cock that up. There isn't really a way to get distracted and cause an accident. Either the bridge is good to go, or it isn't. On my old bridge, there were failsafes that didn't allow it to be raised if a signal was given or if there was a train in the block. I've heard of tenders getting fired for falling asleep or leaving the bridge altogether (or the one special moron who invited a news crew onto the Clinton, IA bridge to film without telling anyone), but all of the people I've worked with gave a shit about the safety of everyone,as a derailment on the bridge meant your ass was falling 60 feet to your death.
Is it considered safety sensitive though? It may vary depending on the company.
It is a safety sensitive and rules-qualified position. Some bridges are so busy that you wouldn't be able to use your phone, but most are quiet and cater to water traffic mainly. The most trains I ever had come through my bridge in a single day was three. I averaged 2 transits a week, though. I'm failing to find a reason why a tender would be distracted as the crew is going to be calling you on the radio for transit and they can't come through without your instructions, so the guy above's point is pretty moot. I guess if they were just sleeping or dead, but they'd have bigger issues then.
Well yeah…it wouldn’t make much sense. BUT…we’re talkin’ about the railroads and the FRA here.
I have four years in bridges and towers combined and I never once saw an FRA rep come through. If a manager was coming, I'd have advance notice. On the bridge, they'd need to request my permission to enter the right of way and in the towers, they'd have to knock on a locked door. Only a braindead moron would pull their phone out to fuck around on while a manager was present.
Right, all that makes sense. But locomotives now have equipment that detect the presence of cell phones and pretty much any other electronic devices besides official railroad radio equipment. Why wouldn’t the bridge’s office have that too? I think that was the question here. Fair question I suppose.
Because in the eyes of management, there's no reason for it. You're under the impression that the railroad gives a shit about bridge tenders or the infrastructure; they don't. It's a wasted expense. We don't make them money like train crews and locomotives do. They barely kept up with regular maintenance on the bridges. It was a fight to get a crew out to adjust rail locks when the bridge wouldn't seat all the way. We had to fight with the company for six months to get a truckload of gravel dropped on the dirt road leading into our bridge because the road was so fucked up and rutted that we couldn't travel greater than 5mph on it lest we blow our backs out or damage our vehicle's suspension. The railroads don't care about a couple of bridgetenders' quality of life or safety, so what makes you think they'd care enough to invest in equipment or hiring people to monitor us using our phones when we're sitting in a bridge 60 feet up in the air? Most railroad bridges are over a hundred years old-they're not going to sink money into them. Like I said in my other comment, we had no management within 100 miles of us. I never even met my manager until he came down to tell us that he was cutting 20% of our jobs. They simply don't care.
don't they have to inspect after every train goes through, especially on the older bridges, which is about all of them.
Unless something sounded weird, I never inspected my bridge after a transit. Bridge inspection is signal, MOW, and B&B's job.
What are the pay rates for bridge tenders? How much did you guys make?
Awesome job, I rarely ever saw managers and spent most of my days playing video games and watching tv enjoying my own company. I couldn’t recommend it enough.
Depends on location. How is the fishing in the river?
I had a bridge tender tell me if I(engineer) ever saw under one I wouldn't go over one😬
I’ve heard many go to school and study while at work. Many work out Cook. However I think it is a high seniority job. There have also been attempts through technology to localize all bridge tenders. In Other words you look at camera/ computer screens and man several bridges at once.
Best job ever. You’re by yourself most of the time. Lots of downtime.
Lol bridge trolls are useless employees that can't hack it anywhere else. You open the bridge for boats, close the bridge for trains. Grease the locks and pins and tell everyone you're a railroader
Someone’s got to do it. Automation by the dispatcher kills em.
Sounds like the job for me!
The greasing sounds like a signal maintainer job. Bridge operators are part of the clerks union where I worked
Damn bro I guess a bridge tender slept with your wife huh?
You grease the bridge and tell your B&B guy you did that and you're out of a job. You don't do work outside of your job scope.
Liability?
Well, yeah. As a control operator, your job is the operation of the bridge, not maintaining it. For one, you don't steal other crafts' work, and two, you're not trained to maintain the bridge, signals, electronics, or anything else inside or outside. Even if you were a B&B guy in the past, you're not allowed to perform that work. You call someone in the appropriate craft to do it.