I’ve dabbled somewhat in sign language, to the point that I can interpret Arlo Guthrie’s song “City of New Orleans.” That is, except for the word for “conductor,” and for “railroad engineer”; the ASL dictionaries I’ve seen don’t have much information about occupations–“conductor,” “physician,” “lawyer,” “writer,” for instance. Most of all I’ve sought the word for “conductor.”
Is there a modifier in ASL that lets you change a verb into a noun, like “-er” in English?
The ASL dictionary I looked in shows you how to sign “Conduct”: “One hand pulls the other hand forward. One hand leads the other” If there is a modifier you could use it with the sign I just described.
BTW- Expect Nickrz to take you to task for attributing “City of New Orleans” to Arlo Guthrie. The writer, whose name escapes me, was a personal friend of Nick’s. (This came up in a thread many moons ago) My favorite version is the one by Johnny Cash.
To Ursa Major: OK, I know Guthrie didn’t write the song. Steve Goodman–who died in 1984 before he was going to sing the National Anthem when the Cubs got into the NL playoffs :(–wrote it. (I still don’t know where Goodman got the expression “Disappearing Railroad Blues” at the end of the third verse; the only other place I’ve seen it used was in the first Straight Dope book, where Cecil talks about the advertising character Phoebe Snow.)
Thanks for the signing information, though. 
ASL gives the user a generous allowance to play with signs and create (so to speak) a necessary meaning from a few carefully chosen signs. Most professions are expressed by signing the occupation and appending the sign for person to the end. Railroad conductor would probably be signed as “train-control-person”, three seperate signs but would appear to a non signer as a single fluid movement.
Verbs are usually changed into nouns (and vice-versa) by repeating the motion or amount of movement of a sign. At least that’s how I do it, and people understand me just fine.
‘verb’ is a noun, why change it?
ASL uses ‘agent’ instead. Both hands in front of you come down like you were signing a ‘person.’ So, CONDUCT+PERSON=condutor or SURF+PERSON= surfer.
But ‘conduct’ has other meanings, so maybe you could use ‘train+control+person.’
handy is deaf. handy uses his hands to talk. Oh, here is by far the best online free ASL dictionary: http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm
Surely “train-conduct-person” would be more accurate? “Train-control-person” would be the engineer. A conductor does “conduct” people in the sense implied by the ASL sign in question, and got the US English name “conductor” for that reason.
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams