When I was a Mechanical Engineer for the Milwaukee Road the first thing my boss told me was that a locomotive engineer was the highest paid unskilled labor in the world. Please don't jump on me about the unskilled part - those are his words not mine. He was comparing it to "skilled" labor in the shops. But that said, I was making $875 a month and they were making $40000+ per year. That was in 1973. Figure out what that is in todays dollars.