If you are a woman who has been, or tried to be, active in rail preservation (tourist railroad, museum, volunteering, being a member of an organization, etc), please share your stories and/or opinions in this anonymous short survey.

I’ve always considered The Roundhouse a place where we share stories from all backgrounds about trains and railroads. Most of the time, these stories are happy, uplifting, and inspirational. Unfortunately, we must acknowledge that there are plenty of stories with negative experiences.

Based on conversations witnessed online recently, I’ve been thinking about the sexism that exists within rail preservation. It’s not unique to this field, but it’s undeniably here, and we all too often don’t want to think about it. I understand that it’s a hard topic, but if rail preservation is to grow, we have to be willing to hear the stories of women who have experienced sexism. Whether it be through online harassment, negative experiences with the general public, or within an organization, these are shameful acts we cannot ignore.

If you are a woman who has been, or tried to be, active in rail preservation, I’d like to get your feedback on any or all of the following questions below. I will read select responses in a special editorial episode of The Roundhouse Podcast. No personal information or email addresses will be collected; this is completely anonymous.

For anyone else, please share this survey link with others.

Thank you for your time for us to examine this important issue together.

https://theroundhousepodcast.com/womensurvey/

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If you were to ask for happy, uplifting, inspirational stories about women in rail preservation, and ask MEN to contribute, maybe there would be more responses to this thread.

No doubt there are some unhappy, non-uplifting, and un-inspirational stories out there regarding women who've been treated shabbily in rail preservation. My guess is that the women who really had bad experiences aren't reading RyPN.

I can tell you a few success stories if you'd like, and I bet plenty other RyPNers can, too.

I appreciate the positive stories of Women in Rail Preservation, and several have already been featured on the podcast. I look forward to having many more in the future as well.

My focus here is specifically to provide women a chance to voice their concerns and negative experiences without fear of repercussion. If we want to progress forward in making rail preservation more diverse, we need to know what is holding it back. My aim with posting this on RYPN is to make any women here aware of its availability, as well as encouraging men and women to share it elsewhere.

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Don't get me started...

Sounds like a great idea for a story. It’s telling how many white men don’t want you to run a story like this....

Train O Mania we are not living in the 1920's. What a can of worms you are trying to open here. I have worked with women countless times in the railroad industry. I worked with two female engineers with the Union Pacific (one on the road and one in the yard) and they were more than happy with their jobs. They were not treated bad at all. If anything they were treated much better then anyone else. I couldn't even imagine anyone pissing them off as the whole yard would come down on you. The manager would probably fire you on the spot and the Union boss would probably tell you to find another job if you were harassing a female employee.

Tourist railroads always have female employees many times equal in number to the men who work there. I have seen countless female conductors, ticket agents, greeters, etc. On cruise trains women overwhelmingly make up the staff. From servers, bartenders, cooks, tour guides, and often conductors.

Much of rail preservation involves dirty, heavy, mechanical work. This is work that the far majority of Americans have no interest in doing, especially for free, myself included. Heavy mechanical work is a trade that women have little or no interest in. In the past they were not interested in it and they are not interested in it now. It's also not a sexism issue. A large percentage of business are owned and operated by women including construction. I have yet to see a all female crew build a house or operate a manufacturing plant.

Instead of asking women about their bad experiences with men, why don't you ask those same women why they are not scraping paint off boxcars, pulling out boiler tubes, replacing windows in passenger cars, changing out wheels, and pounding over stay bolts with a rivet gun. How many women are going to work for a tourist railroad as a engineer or fireman during the Summer and then do mechanical work during the off season?

On what basis do you draw the conclusion that white men oppose the story being told?

I think it might be entertaining to hear how the ladies I know who are doing well in rail preservation deal with the sexist pigs they have encountered, and maybe how they ever manage to avoid becoming professional victims.

Just as men weren't asked to respond, we weren't asked about Class I work experiences, either. So here goes: The traditional "men's jobs" train and engine service, shop crafts, and track are man's jobs. Some women can handle these jobs, just as some men can't. It isn't sexism, it's just a fact that not everybody is cut out to be a railroader. And a lot of folks do better as clerks.

I've seen plenty of sexism in 13 years of engine service with BN. Some of it was unjustified, and some of it was justifiable. Justifiable ?? Yes, in some cases, I blame the victim -- We have profiles that women fit into, some are there to get a lawsuit, some to get a husband, some to get guys to do their work and generally avoid doing anything useful, and SOME GO TO THE WORKPLACE TO WORK. The first three catagories sometimes display themselves as sex objects, which tends to be flypaper for sexist pigs. Kind of like visiting a gator farm with your pockets full of ground meat, or walking around the ghetto at night with folding money sticking out of all your pockets.

Now, just because somebody "deserves it" or "asks for it" doesn't excuse us overt sexist pigs for bad behavior.

The fourth catagory of lady railroaders are the ones that have plenty of support from their co-workers and the unions. However, they know how to make sexist pigs look ridiculous without any help from us.

In 57 years, I've never seen overt sexism in rail preservation or tourist railroading. It's probably because the women know how to handle it, rather than exagerating it. And I hope it's also because it doesn't happen that often.

I find the responses here...amusing.

While it's very reassuring to hear that people in this thread have not directly encountered sexism, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the present day. The survey answers that are coming in are proof of that.

Again, I'm all for sharing positive stories about women in railroading (and have done so already), but rail preservation doesn't grow from remaining comfortable. It grows from hearing what we don't want to hear and learning from that feedback to improve what we do.

The OP is making a false assumption that all work involved in railroad preservation involves only work where you get your hands dirty and while some tasks do, there are many where that isn't the case including things like marketing, website work, working with the public etc. etc. etc/

To that avail, if a proper study were done, the conclusion would likely to be rail preservation is just like all other professions.

Bob H

I don’t see where the OP made any such assumptions. Other commenters have.

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Exactly. This survey makes no assumption about what is specifically involved in the role. The respondent could be an administrator, gift shop attendant, etc.



The reality is that it's impossible to say how pervasive the problem is because:

1) How do you determine a fair survey sample?

2) How do you account for the experiences that women are too afraid to share?

My goal is simply to have an outlet where women can share their stories of abuse so we can consider questions such as these:

1) Do I contribute to any situations like these?

2) How does my organization prevent against situations like this from happening? For example, does my organization have any form of sexual harassment training or people to whom abuse can be reported?