Something Special: April 1943 - Coal Dusted Portraits of WWII Woman Railroad Workers

Wonderful web site and some fantastic photos. We forget our history much too soon.

Scotie

That trend worked well on into the 50's and 60's. There was a large number of those women who lost their husbands during the war time, and had to keep on keepin on. I remember seeing those lady's, back in the very early fifties ,when visiting the Pennsy Roundhouse across the street from where I lived in Portland area of Louisville, Ky. 

K&I, I.C., L&N, and the C&O/Jeffersonville Bridge(NYC) Roundhouses and freight stations had women working there as well!.......Times sure different today!  

Does anyone wonder why they're called the "Greatest Generation"?. One look into their eyes and you see the whole story. I don't know many men today, much less women, who would do that work. Some days I weep for what our country has become.

Clarence,

That's one reason I run trains and in the era I do, to remember that generation (my parents and my grandparents). In contrast to the more familiar Rosie the Riveter, it seems most of these women were assigned jobs that involved "sweeping" and "cleaning" -- at least according to the photo captions. There was the one roundhouse trainee, 'though. I was also struck by how dirty their hands or coveralls might have been, but their faces were freshly cleaned and make up applied. An appropriate expectation of the age and no doubt the ladies themselves.

Tomlinson Run RR

I couldn't agree more. Drudge work with Pride. That is also one of the reasons I run trains from that era. Everyone worked, no matter how demeaning the job was. You took pride in what you did and how it was done, that's how I was raised. Charity was an insult. 

Jack Delano, in my opinion, was one of the greatest photographers to ever look through a viewfinder.  He immigrated with his family from the Ukraine in 1914.  His birth name was Jacob Ovcharov.  During the war he traveled throughout the US photographing the war effort from every aspect and the people making it all happen.  His wife Irene traveled with him helping him keep notes, etc.   His assignment to photograph freight trains between Chicago and the west coast gave him the authority to stop a train anywhere he felt a good photograph could be taken even if it meant asking the engineer to move his train just a few yards.  There are numerous books featuring his photography and the humanitarian work he and Irene did in Puerto Rico after the war.  His pictures of the Whisky Island Huletts, taken in 1943 on Kodak color slide film, are some of my favorites.  They are available as a free download from the Library of Congress website. 

I don't see that work as demeaning at all.  Any job well done is a job well done.  Thanks for posting this.  Makes me proud to live in the USA!

Particularly liked the photos of the ladies wiping down the C&NW Class H 4-8-4........the 4th heaviest 4-8-4 built. Quite a task !     

One of my favorites, this gal has PRIDE in her smile!

http://www.shorpy.com/node/17246

This all started with a WPA project to document rural America, sometimes in color. There's a treasure trove of photos of Americana from the pre-war era only for this reason. For the most part, the only reason there are such good color documentation of the pre-war Army maneuvers is that photographers from these projects were there with their cameras (mostly shooting large-format negatives with cameras like the Speed Graphic and other like it).

The project lasted into mid-WW2 when it was killed for pretty obvious reasons. Jack Delano took lots of railroad photos, but also of other stuff. Click here if you want a great book of his stuff. This was all back when all photographers went through art school to be photographers, which is why you see a level of craftsmanship from photos of that era you don't often find today (in an era where everyone with a cell camera thinks they're Ansel Adams).

But as for women in such jobs, don't forget that women worked the entry-level stuff that didn't require much training, as the workplace of the 40s still didn't trust women with much more than that. Until 1944 (when the military was really hurting for men and the draft standards were relaxed again) you still saw lots of men in the civilian workforce.

Those Mid-West girls are kinda rough around the edges.  Glad I married a New Yorker. 

Not a photo, but one of my favorites. I think it covers the spirit of the topic very well indeed.

Those are some great images of not just the women but snap shots of life itself.   Such a treasure.

There was a Pennsylvania railroad film about the GG1. There was a woman servicing the engine. The film came out in the fifties.

Nice pics. I like the Rosie the Riveter ones too...

 This reminds me how much things have changed in my lifetime. Women moving into the workforce, cessation of tobacco use and widespread infusion of computers all occurred in a comparatively short time period.

  Change is inevitable.

Douglas

The change during WW2 was very odd, in that as soon as the war was over, they were expected to go right back to the kitchen. And until the 60s, it pretty much stayed that way, too. I always wondered how much resentment there was for these women who knew personal freedom for the first time ever, just to be told to give it all up.

But all that said, I've read employment stats from the WW1 and WW2 eras, and there were a lot less "Roise the Riveters" than people today think there were during the WW2 years.

p51 posted:

there were a lot less "Roise the Riveters" than people today think there were during the WW2 years.

I don't know...I've got a few books showing construction of B-17s. Seems like 95% of Boeing's assembly floor workforce was women, judging by those photos.

smd4 posted:

p51 posted:

there were a lot less "Roise the Riveters" than people today think there were during the WW2 years.

I don't know...I've got a few books showing construction of B-17s. Seems like 95% of Boeing's assembly floor workforce was women, judging by those photos.

A lot of those photos were specifically taken in places where there were women workers, as that was a huge thing during WW2 to promote enlistments for otherwise exempt defense workers (until that got re-adjusted in 1944). There was a massive effort to push for women to take up jobs so the men who previously had them could go off and serve. Don't forget, this was an effort going on long before Pearl Harbor, as FDR passed peacetime conscription more than a year before we actually got into the shooting war.

That's not to say that there weren't businesses that employed a lot of women in previously male-dominated roles during the war, but it wasn't quite as common as people today believe. Don't forget, there were plenty of men in the right age range who didn't qualify for service, even with the slackened standards in '44. Many industries vanished overnight with the war and later rationing, so there was a massive consolidation of manpower until around 1946 when the last of the wartime contracts played out (no, not all of those contracts ended on VE or VJ days)

There's a great deal of misconceptions of the US during WW2, just like in any time period, to simplify what in reality was far more complex than that. While it's important to never diminish the substantial positive effects that woman in heavy industry had in winning the war, it's equally important to view history from the facts, not the stereotypes we hold today.

p51 posted:

The change during WW2 was very odd, in that as soon as the war was over, they were expected to go right back to the kitchen. And until the 60s, it pretty much stayed that way, too. I always wondered how much resentment there was for these women who knew personal freedom for the first time ever, just to be told to give it all up.

But all that said, I've read employment stats from the WW1 and WW2 eras, and there were a lot less "Roise the Riveters" than people today think there were during the WW2 years.

Be careful analyzing women's wants. I am 50 and I still cannot figure them out.

But I remember talking to my Grandmother / and my Mom's oldest sister. I asked about this and their reply was they were happy at the time to give up the 7 to 5 grind and get back to a happy family home... Happy the war was over and life could resume to normalcy. 

J Daddy posted:

But I remember talking to my Grandmother / and my Mom's oldest sister. I asked about this and their reply was they were happy at the time to give up the 7 to 5 grind and get back to a happy family home... Happy the war was over and life could resume to normalcy.  

Yeah, that's a fair point. I mostly referred to financial freedom, as working in a shipyard or airplane factory 6 days a week sure couldn't have been all that liberating.

The one thing people fail to account for from the "Greatest Generation" is the vast numbers of people returning from the war and how nobody talked about the horrors they saw overseas afterward.

Why was that? It wasn't a generational thing, I think. Instead, I feel it was the simple concept that if almost every able-bodied man had similar horrific experience that woke them up in cold sweats, who would they talk to? If (seemingly) everyone had the same problems, who's going to show empathy? No, I think that if someone started on how they can't sleep at night or have flashbacks, the person they're telling it to is going to tell them to put a sock in it because if they didn't see as bad (if not worse), they sure knew several other men who had. It's age-old concept of everyone talking but nobody listening, so why bother at all? And after a few years, that's going to bottle up and soon you're dealing with younger people you know couldn't possibly relate to you at all even if they were willing to lend an ear.

So, you have the waning of a generation who locked it up for so long, they can't let it out anymore. So much history has been lost and will be, for that very reason alone.

I think the stories were told, but it was later in life. I remember and wanting to listing to my older piers telling me stories of attacks on both Fronts. They gave their all, and to be put in that spot of fight or flight is something our generation will never experience. 

I pray our next generation is never put to that test.

J Daddy posted:

I pray our next generation is never put to that test.

Amen!

As a kid growing up in the 1950's in Conneaut, OH there was a man who sang in our church choir who was missing 2 fingers from one of his hands.  As was stated by another poster the horrors of WWII were never discussed and kids never asked questions.  Years later we learned that he was a B17 pilot who flew bombing missions over Germany.  On his 27th mission his plane was hit by flak which severed his fingers.  He kept the plane in the air until more flak took out engines.  After his crew bailed out he left the aircraft and they all became German POW's.  He was liberated exactly 1 year to the day he was captured.  This past March 19th, he quietly passed away.  He was 95.  Every August, at the annual D Day Reenactment, he always sang the national anthem.  His presence will be sorely missed at this years event.  He was one of many veterans who were always honored during the event.  If interested the website is D-Day Ohio: D-DAY Conneaut

For women railroaders, when the war ended they generally weren't fired, but were laid off. Any returning servicemen who had been railroaders before the war had seniority over them, as the women were relatively new hires. In the book "The Railroaders" they interviewed a gal who worked as a yard switchman during the war, and was laid off when the war ended. She decided she wanted to keep working, but she had to find other work until she was recalled. IIRC it was like 3-4 years until enough guys ahead of her retired or quit and she was called back to work on the railroad.