I went with CSX (Freight) back in 2003. I did the Conductor school, and was looking to to "upgrade" to the Engineer seat in about a year. They asked me to go into the management side after a year as a Conductor which for my age would have been a pretty good move. Overall I liked the job, and I worked with some interesting people (10th grade dropouts to retired Doctors). It was very dangerous on the freight side. During my time there we had about five people killed and several hurt bad. Moving from conductor to engineer was going to be much safer. As I said, I liked it but in the end I was approached about a chief pilot job in corporate aviation, and decided to go back to flying. I would think that being an Engineer with Amtrak would be awesome! Good luck to you.