Have you taken a ride on a bi-level train? There are bi-level trains across many parts of the U.S. and around the world. A blogger in New Jersey took a look at how many steps a trainman/trainwoman must take each day and each week to collect tickets from passengers on the train. It’s pretty staggering!

From the blog post:

If a trip between Dover and New York, for example, makes 17 stops, to collect all the tickets on both levels (assuming passengers are not restricted to one level) the trainperson must traverse these 20 steps 17 times for a total of 340 steps per trip. On an assignment that runs 4 trips the trainperson must traverse 1360 steps for the day. If the job does the same work for 5 straight days that is a total of 6800 steps each week!

A normal staircase in a residence (your house) is 13 steps so a normal week working a MidTown assignment is the pretty much the equivalent (even if the step rise on the multi-level is shorter by a few inches) of climbing up and down (6800 divided by 13 = 523 divided by 2 [up and down flights] a 261 1/2 story residential building or essentially climbing and descending the Empire State building (102 commercial stories) over two and a half times every week.

Damn. You need to be in better shape to collect tickets than operate the train!