From what I can gather, the current crew for most trains is 2. There are no cabooses anymore, so it's just what crew can fit in the engine compartment, and there is no provision for crew rest or sleeping on the train. Engineers and crew are swapped out at specific points, when the train arrives at that spot.

The workers suspect that the railroads want to go down to 1-man crews on the trains, for cost savings, but they feel (and I agree) that that's probably unsafe. There are on-the-ground people at endpoints, some bridges, critical crossings, etc., and the number of fixed ground staff would go up with 1-man crews, but that doesn't help when you have a problem 60 miles into the cascades.

Standby people is a possibility, but trains are often out in rural, or even inaccessible places; it may not be possible to get a supplementary crew member to a train without a helicopter or at least a multi-hour drive.