Female engineers and Firemen in the steam era.

peckettloco · **Joined:** Wed Dec 09, 2020 1:15 pm **Posts:** 7

My thoughts were also that this was a steam locomotive. If it was an electric it looks like an 'industrial' rather than a main line loco. on the issue of Russia I have found numerous accounts of women footplate crew as was also the case in China - There is a Harvard Ph.D thesis by Lida Jurgens detailing women railroad workers in China especially footplate engineers such as Tian Guiying.

Terry

EJ Berry · **Posted:** Sat Dec 12, 2020 12:59 am

Bush Terminal 11 is likely an 0-4-0T steam engine. They had electric locomotives but they were mostly GE steeple cabs. Bush Terminal was more recently famous for a fleet of GE-Ingersoll Rand hood unit diesels built in 1931 with some in service to the 1970's. All their locomotives were switchers.

Note the woman engineer is on the left side of engine 11.

Phil Mulligan

softwerkslex · **Posted:** Tue Dec 15, 2020 5:42 pm

Dennis Storzek wrote:

Just a series of comments that come to mind...

Women in the cab unlucky? Certainly. They're a distraction. There is always some Bozo who wants to flirt, and while flirting he's not paying attention to his duties, and THAT could get everyone killed. Eventually social pressure forced acceptance, but back in the steam era there was no pressure to accept this risk.

Restroom facilities? I grew up in the construction industry, not railroading, but I can still remember my Dad carried a roll of toilet paper in his toolbox... all the carpenters did. If you needed to crap, you found an empty nail box and took it off in a corner somewhere. Need to urinate? Even I am old enough to remember the lectures, "We have portable toilets now... Anyone caught pissing on the walls will be fired." This was in the early seventies.

This spilled over into railroading... I recall a published story about the DSS&A where the superintendent wanted to promote a woman to a yard clerk position. All the carmen objected, because when they needed to whizz, they just let fly... it was accepted practice. The compromise reached is the woman got the job... and a whistle, which she had to blow repeatedly anytime she was out doing a yard check, so the men knew she was coming. This was late fifties, early sixties.

Some women clung tenaciously to their wartime jobs. I recall when I was a kid in the fifties or early sixties, an interview on TV with a woman who was retiring as a crane operator in one steel mills. She had gotten the job during the war and never left. The fact that this was newsworthy speaks to how rare it was.

The alternative solution is you just dispense with all the prudery about nakedness and toilet activities. Here in northern Europe the culture is completely different, and there is not the same level of privacy between the sexes, and it is pretty common to see people urinating by the side of the road, etc.

softwerkslex · **Posted:** Tue Dec 15, 2020 5:52 pm

Overmod wrote:

The 'woman engine driver' picture is interesting. What little documentation I have shows engine #11 as a baldwin 0-4-0, and the picture certainly seems more like a steam than an electric locomotive of the type the Bush Terminal knew in the WWI era.

There is no record of an electric #11 at all, and I couldn't find a picture showing the 'rest' of the steam locomotive with that number.

I think it is posed. She is on the wrong side to be "driving".

Nova55 · **Joined:** Thu Apr 12, 2007 8:09 pm **Posts:** 596

Bush Terminal #11 is a Baldwin 0-4-0 built in 1907.

bedt14 · **Posted:** Tue Dec 15, 2020 9:32 pm

We might be going about this all wrong.

If you notice, the article calls her a locomotive driver. Here in the US, we've never referred to them as "drivers", but "engineers".

Second, the engine or locomotive "drivers" in England operated from the left side of the cab; (traditionally the firemans side in the US).

So, an English magazine would from their observation of her position of being on the left side of the cab call her a "driver" (engineer) and not recognize her for being a fireman.

The negative (or image) is not reversed as the serifs on the number 11 is facing in the correct direction per other images of the Bush steamers I have (10, 12, 14).

IIRC, England has this quirky habit of operating their locomotives (and their automobiles) on the "wrong" side of the road/right of way a/k/a what we call wrong railing here in the US.

The only other suggestion I can put forth, is the possibility of dual controls in the cab but I highly doubt this for a steam locomotive; and after conferring with an retired BEDT engineer, he does not recall the steamers at Bush or BEDT having dual controls. Only the Bush Terminal 59 ton Ingersoll Rands diesel electrics had duplicate controls on either side of the cab.

As for being an electric locomotive, they totally got that wrong; as its Bush Terminal #11, an 0-4-0T Baldwin, built 4/1910, (Baldwin class 4-30-C) without a doubt. Bush Terminal did not have an electric or a diesel locomotive numbered 11.

Happy Holidays to all!

484Mike · **Joined:** Wed Mar 27, 2013 3:55 am **Posts:** 173

softwerkslex wrote:

The alternative solution is you just dispense with all the prudery about nakedness and toilet activities. Here in northern Europe the culture is completely different, and there is not the same level of privacy between the sexes, and it is pretty common to see people urinating by the side of the road, etc.

Urinating in public is not common at all, at least not in central Europe. At times there was a certain effect on employment of women, as over-regulating meant that the smallest of businesses had to have separate toilets for men and women. I believe this was not even an issue for European railroad companies in general, as women either weren't fit, willing or allowed to do hard labour as firemen.

All photos shown here in this thread seem to be either socialist propaganda or depictions of very rare exceptions to the rule. The socialists had a strong interest in forcing women to work as hard as men, so the state media depicted women as working heroes, but at the end of the day most the very hard labour still stayed a male stronghold even in China.

@ Philip:
My guess is the photographer just chose the sunny side of the cab and had the two persons pretend being busy.

Mike

softwerkslex · **Posted:** Fri Feb 12, 2021 5:31 am

Just saw this on a promotion banner on Trains.com

https://chrisenss.com/coming-soon-iron-ladies/

Dave · **Posted:** Fri Feb 12, 2021 10:55 am

Looks like a Shay..... interesting. Maybe a touring party going up to Waldorf?

Jennie K · **Joined:** Fri Feb 13, 2015 2:48 pm **Posts:** 192

I would hazard a guess that this is the Mt Tamalpais

Brian Norden · **Posted:** Fri Feb 12, 2021 3:21 pm

Jennie K wrote:

I would hazard a guess that this is the Mt Tamalpais

Yes, Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County. And these are ladies out on a day trip probably with their husbands.

Tom F · **Joined:** Mon Jul 02, 2018 8:04 pm **Posts:** 314

Dollywood will have it's first female steam locomotive engineer. Disable ad pop ups to read full article.

Julie Collins: Female steam locomotive engineer
https://www.citizentribune.com/news/jul ... 20865.html

softwerkslex · **Posted:** Mon Feb 15, 2021 9:50 pm

Brian Norden wrote:

Jennie K wrote:

I would hazard a guess that this is the Mt Tamalpais

Yes, Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County. And these are ladies out on a day trip probably with their husbands.

I have not read the book, but judging by the title and the purpose, maybe the ladies in the picture are not tourists, but management?

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Tue Feb 16, 2021 6:33 pm

A review of the author's other titles should detect a theme:

Write what appeals to feminist "virtue signalling" in public libraries.

Female engineers and Firemen in the steam era.

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