I’ve been fulminating about out-of-control compensation in the public sector in California. But this from New York takes the cake. More crooks.

Take the case of Edward J. Koerber.

On a spring evening in 2004, Mr. Koerber reported for his overnight shift as a train engineer at the Jamaica Storage Yard. By the end of his eight-hour shift, Mr. Koerber would earn four days’ pay for one day’s work, transportation authority records show.

Assigned to the railyard that night, Koerber was instead sent to passenger service. Under union rules, this change entitled him to an extra day’s pay. Over the next few hours, he ended up operating both an electric engine and a diesel engine. These dual duties earned him a second day’s pay.

Around 2 a.m., Mr. Koerber took an engine in for maintenance. With that came another day’s pay.

These three contract violations resulted in penalty payments that totaled $718. He also earned, among other things, $157 for a few hours of overtime and $15 for not getting to eat during his normal lunch break. The L.I.R.R. was supposed to pay him $247 for his work that day. Instead, he ended up with $1,177.

Shifts like this were not that unusual. Mr. Koerber pulled off seven others like it that year.

Nor was he alone: L.I.R.R. engineers were paid four days’ wages for a single day of work on 30 occasions in 2004. These cases were documented in a 2006 report by the transportation authority’s inspector general, who also found more than 500 examples of engineers making three days’ wages in one day and nearly 150 examples of conductors doing the same.

That year, Mr. Koerber earned $211,586, according to payroll data. But his compensation the next year was even more remarkable: $276,456. Only the president of the railroad earned more: $287,658.

Soon after, Mr. Koerber retired from the L.I.R.R., and he ultimately took with him more than just a pension. In 2006, records show, he began receiving disability payments from the Railroad Retirement Board. In all, his retiree income is about $170,000 a year, according to estimates based on public records.

Mr. Koerber, who is now 60, declined to comment.