Jim Greenhalf looks at the part played by women in making sure the railways stayed on the right track during two world wars These photographs from York’s National Railway Museum illustrate that railways are not a male preserve.

Though women tend not to go train-spotting the way men and boys do, legions of ladies have helped keep Britain on track thoughout the various ages of railways.

The National Railway Museum tells the story of the railways, not only of the men that kept the rails running, but how women had an essential part to play. A film played in a permanent display in the Museum’s Great Hall, tells just some of those stories of women that worked on the nation’s railway network.

The first recorded women railway workers were gatekeepers. A small cottage near the crossing would have housed a crossing gate keeper and for a small fee – and in some cases, no income but free rent on the house – a woman would look after the crossing.

Men built the railways in the early 19th century. Navvies came from far and wide living together in rough shanties or lodging with locals. They were reported to have been hard men whose spare-time hobbies were drinking, swearing and fighting. Women landladies and shanty-keepers earned a living by serving their needs.

As in earlier times, women in this era still held the position of level crossing gate keeper and on the Great Western Railway nearly 40 per cent of all gatekeepers were women.

Women were occasionally employed as station mistresses at country stations where there were few real managerial duties. Their main tasks were ticket selling and collecting and they didn’t manage any staff.

By 1914, about 900 women worked in railway workshops. Many were skilled trimmers, French polishers or sewing machinists producing the finely upholstered and polished hardwood interiors of railway coaches.

On August 4,1914, Britain declared war on Germany for the first time. By September, nearly 100,000 railwaymen had left to fight in the trenches and the transport of vital supplies to the frontline was threatened.

It was suggested that women might perform intense railway work while the men were away at war. Over the next three years, women performed most railway tasks, with the exception of driving trains and firing engines as these required too lengthy a training period.

By 1918, the number of women carrying out clerical, telephone and telegraph duties had risen tenfold. The number of unskilled women labourers in rail workshops increased from 43 in 1914 to 2,547 by 1918.

Women porters carryied luggage, fetched coal and lit fires; they announced and despatched trains, dealt with livestock, moored and shackled ferries, and weighed, loaded and unloaded and carried parcels, mailbags, fish, milk churn; they cleaned, gardened and coupled coaches to engines.

Cleaners at the London and South Western Railway’s Wimbledon Park depot were the first to tackle the issue of troublesome, unsuitable clothing.

They loosened their corsets and put on men’s breeches. This shocking innovation soon spread to other areas allowing women to do tasks which were dangerous or downright impossible in a long skirt.

Gradually this idea became more popular until most women cleaners adopted trousers and the railway companies began to issue trouser overalls as uniform.

Engine cleaning was one of the filthiest jobs on the railways. For men it would eventually lead to the job of fireman or engine driver, but this promotional ladder was denied to women.

Engine cleaners had to clear away the vast quantities of soot and ash produced by locomotives. They had to work underneath engines and inside the boilers and water tanks.

Women were paid two-thirds less than men on the railways. However, the sudden increase in the number of women employees during the war led to a new demand for the railway unions to admit women. In 1915, a vote was held and those in favour of recruiting women members won the day.

There were more objections to women working in signalling than in any other type of work. A high level of concentration was needed to understand and interpret the telegraph and bell codes used in the signal box, and signal levers could be heavy and hard to pull – all skills which some men believed that women didn’t possess.

When the war ended on November 11, 1918, women were expected to hand back jobs to the men they had replaced, but retained their old, pre-war posts as waiting room attendants, gatekeepers, chars, hostel matrons and laundrywomen.

However, the number of women employed by the railways was never to fall to its pre-war level.

When war broke out against Germany once more on September 3, 1939, the proportion of women in the railway labour force reached a new peak.

Once against the first grade to be opened up to women was that of porter. Women also came back to work as booking clerks and train announcers. Women again cleaned carriages in stations and depots and engines in the locomotive sheds.

In contrast to the First World War, managers had little hesitation in employing women as train guards, and early 1941 saw the first signalwomen.

They were generally given three months’ training and many were placed in sole charge of signal boxes. By 1941, women were also back doing heavy platelaying work on the permanent way. Women also became mechanics and repaired lorries, operated drills and lathes, welded, painted, drove steam-hammers, operated pneumatic drills and cranes, riveted, turned and planed wood.

They built, assembled and repaired telephone and telegraph equipment, built engines, and serviced radial drills, forges, lathes and other machinery.

Although in the post-war era more women went out to work, the railways were not at the forefront of the revolution. They began to gradually change as a result of the 1975 Sex Discrimination Act, which outlawed discrimination at work based on sex or marital status.

The bar on graduate management training for women was removed, resulting in an increase in women management trainees from none in 1975 to 20 in 1981. Women were also accepted for driver training.

Legislation “protecting” women from compulsory night and weekend work enabled British Rail to exclude women from maintenance workshops and track work.

British Rail quickly applied for exemption from this law for carriage cleaners – by now a “traditional” women’s job. However, the railway was much slower to apply for dispensation for other, predominantly male, occupations, where there was unlikely to be a labour shortage and soon fell foul of the Equal Opportunities Commission.

In the Commission’s subsequent report in 1986 indications of prejudice, or harassment, of unfair treatment, of conscious and unconscious acts of injustice, of potentially unlawful sex discrimination appear throughout.

Railway management tried to put some of the blame on the trade unions. In 1986 none of the railway unions had a specific policy on women but all claimed that equal opportunities existed and that it was “up to the women to prove themselves”.

In 1988, British Rail announced that more attention was being focused on the promotion of women to management jobs. More women were accepted for driver training and in 1991 there were 110 women either driving trains or in training to do so.

In 1990, an Annual Women’s Conference was initiated to deal with problems experienced by women at work when the NUR amalgamated with the National Union of Seamen to form the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers.

Unions were beginning to recognise women as part of their membership and the railway companies started developing equal opportunities.