I'm a safety contractor/consultant for short line and regional railroads in the US. There are about 550 RRs in the US and a lot of them are small...under 10 total employees. But railroads are a unique industry and have to comply with a shitload of regulations. Some railroads fall under OSHA, FRA, and MSHA regs. So my job is to help them comply with safety regs. since they can't afford to have someone like me on staff.

I started with hearing conservation and expanded from there. Now I'm a Certified Safety Professional and an Occupational Health and Safety Technologist. It's a really fun job and I get to travel a lot.

Rail is such a massive component of US freight but everyone assumes it's a thing of the past, but that's not true. Rail is growing like crazy and is so modern in so many ways. And with the growing emphasis on safety, jobs like mine are really starting to boom now. Safety will always be important for any industry where people are involved, and due to the nature of short line operations, there's very little chance they'll be automated even in 100 years (costs would bankrupt the short lines and tank our entire freight network is the short of it. Even complying with new PTC rules is putting a major hamper on some short lines.)

Anyone interested in this field should major in some kind of math or science degree - a B.S. in chemistry or biology is good. From there you can become an industrial hygienist, a CSP, safety employee for a major company, whatever. Safety is a massive field and there's really no limit to what you can specialize in. For 8 years, I basically only did railroad hearing conservation specific only to the FRA rule, for example.