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Railways like the airlines need people in particular places at given times to drive their trains. Having any slack requires having slack and fast transport to get on call replacements into position. That costs money so they run as tight as inhumanly possible to squeeze more profitable work out of their employees at their expense.

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It doesn't seem that expensive to just always have an extra staffer scheduled on routes. Ocean shippers are just as profit-seeking as train companies and they don't mind keeping lots of extra crew around. Are there artificial barriers to hiring that train companies have to deal with?

That's because they can employ workers from various low income nations (especially if English speaking) for cheap. No pesky environmental regulations for the fuel quality and resulting pollution either. Compare the labor costs of shipping from one us port direct to another us port (requires a us crew) and a foreign port to a us port.

The issue is you could need the spare people at a lot more locations that are far more geographically dispersed than a cargo ship and they're all better paid than your generic seaman, a lot of workers on ships are from much lower COL countries and get paid less accordingly.

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