Pros
Easy job, love the big machinery, interesting coworkers, excellent pay after the first few years, when you get off the extra board. Unique. Great feeling of accomplishment. Nothing like it out there. Tend to see your bosses about once every month or two. Good retirement pay. Your spouse will also receive retirement pay. Military friendly in hiring, and for deployment. Overall, a fantastic job with good pay if you can live with the crazy on-call work schedules, long hours away from home, and day to day chicken-stuff brought by management and dispatch. If you've been in the military, you can handle it, and a lot of what happens will feel familiar, especially "hurry up and wait."
Cons
Complete and utter disconnect between management and labor, especially in transportation. Trainmasters and road foremen haven't done the job and are often ignorant and are quick to place blame on crews. You can and will be punished for other people's mistakes that are out of your control. Management will go out of their way to deny bonuses and pay claims. Standard punishment is temporary suspension or "firing". Long hours away from home, sometimes up to two days. Accomodations away from home can be poor depending on district. Can be very boring sitting in a siding. You may spend up to twelve hours working outdoors in all kinds of weather and walking long distances. You are required to be in a union and will have to pay large sums for "firing insurance", which will be needed for those suspensions. Everyone uses it at some point. Taxes are also higher for rail employees, but partially compensated because some goes toward a pension. You will start on an extra board, and receive a minimum garaunteed salary. If you are National Guard, count on not getting the garuanteed minimum. If you miss work for any reason, you don't get the garauntee. Almost impossible to get time off, short of marking off sick, although management usually allows that as a polite fiction, if it doesn't exceed more than about three days a month. Also, if business gets slow, there's a good chance you may be furloughed anywhere from a couple of months to a year or more.