35 minute read
on the Railways
Although the first railways were built as far back as the 1820s, it was not until the outbreak of the First World War that women began to become employed on them and, from what has been written, it was not something that was, at least initially done from choice but, instead was a situation that was forced upon the railway companies as hundreds of thousands of men were taken into the armed forces and a new source of labour had to be found very quickly.
Immediately the war ended, these women were thrown back out into civvie street as their men took back the jobs. The same situation occurred in 1939 and in this case, their stories have been written in a fascinating new book - Female Railway Workers in World War II by Susan Major (published by Pen & Sword). Susan is a railway historian, is retired and now lives in York. In her book, she says,
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Driver Training in South Wales
The opportunity arose to talk to Beverley (Bev) Hannible who works for Transport for Wales in Cardiff as the company’s first female train driver and who has now been promoted to Driver & Operations Trainer for TfW.
Great Western Star: Firstly, congratulations on your appointment, it’s quite a responsibility! Does train driving run through your family?
Bev Hannible: I believe so. Certainly, my grandfather was a train driver in and around Manchester, although I don’t know a lot about his career.
GWS: How long have you been working on the railway?
BH: I joined as a Guard in 2005 before progressing to become a train driver in April 1025. At that time, I then felt confident enough to make this big step up to become a driver. In November 2020, I was promoted to my current position, having been working down here in Cardiff for three years.
GWS: Which routes were you driving?
BH: I was fortunate in that I have been driving up into the Valleys, so out to Merthyr, Aberdare, Treherbert and down to Barry Island. These are lovely routes and so it was a nice run up there.
GWS: If you were so happy driving, what made you switch to training?
BH: I loved my time as a driver, but I also love teaching. About 20 years ago, I taught street dancing and so this new job allows me to marry two skills – driving and teaching. I find that I
“With millions of men called up for service, it fell to women to keep many of Britain’s vital industries and services running, among them, the railways. There had of course been women already working in some areas of the railway, such as in clerical, cleaning, and catering jobs but, in wartime, many women were employed in the kind of work which was completely new to females, working as porters and guards, and in maintenance and workshop operations.”
Obviously, things have moved on a lot since those unenlightened days and the occurrence of International Women’s Day on the 8th March provided an opportunity to see how things have changed and are continuing to change for the better. In this article, Great Western Star talks to one lady in South Wales and looks at how other ladies are enjoying life on the railways across the country.
thoroughly enjoy training as it gives me a great deal of satisfaction as each group passes out but, yes, I do still miss those rides up the valleys!
As Transport for Wales – Driver and Operations Trainer, it carries a great deal of responsibility but there is another aspect to this. I believe, and this is something that is also important to TfW, we must show that we are not just employing women behind the scenes but that we are keen to have them in front line positions, namely driving. We are moving down this route and my position as trainer is a sign that being a woman is no barrier to progress. We already have women in the training team who are training platform staff, guards, and conductors and so this latest step reinforces that.
GWS: What do you find so interesting about this job?
BH: It is like any training or teaching job in that each group or class will be different. The mix of
people is different and so you must be adaptable and flexible. We have the trainees for 11 weeks and I think many are surprised when they first walk into the classroom to see that they have a female instructor. Some are quite OK with this while some need me to gain their respect. I have not had a problem so far.
GWS: Do you have a mix of trainees?
BH: Yes, we have a few women now coming through, but it will take time. For some it has been their lifetime’s dream to be a train driver and for others, it has simply taken a long time to get here. I don’t think that this is an industry where there will be more women drivers than men but at least we are making a start. I think that my being in this position makes it seem less daunting to them.
GWS: Have you ever had to prove that you are just as good at your job as a man?
BH: No but then again, I think that it is more a question of proving it to myself. I have always believed that, if you want something badly enough, then you just must work that bit harder to make it happen. Also, you need someone who believes enough in you to give you a chance and, here in TfW, I was given that opportunity. All you need are the right qualifications and the right attitude in wanting to improve yourself – after that its up to you.
GWS: Have you ever come up against negative attitudes?
BH: Sadly, some people do still have an attitude. I can remember when I was driving, I would pull into a station and, shock, horror, it’s a woman driving! I have even had men refusing to get on the train because I was a woman. The funniest one was a couple where the man was about 6f 4in and the woman about 4ft nothing. He would not get on until she gave him a right talking to and he sheepishly joined the train but was not happy.
GWS: Have you had any BAME trainees yet?
BH: Not yet. I know there are people from various backgrounds training in many roles, including guards and conductors but so far none as drivers. You cannot make people apply, all you can do is to show them the opportunities and then it is up to them. You simply must have the right attitude and work hard. It should not be that you get a particular job because of your sex, background, ethnicity etc, it should only be because you can show that you are the right person for the job, with the right experience, training qualifications, etc.
GWS: Now you have switched to training, do you still get the opportunity to drive on occasions?
BH: Yes, we still must do regular competency test drives to main our level of competency and we also have regular reviews with our managers. Basically, however, we are full-time in the training school.
GWS: What is the best part of your job?
BH: For me it’s when the trainees leave, and they are happy and confident. For me that is an achievement seeing them walk out excited about the next step. We have been nurturing these people through their eleven weeks. They come in in week one, you don’t know them, you build relationships with them. A lot of things can happen in those eleven weeks, at home, personally, they can get sick. We have had a few hurdles to overcome with COVID but, at the end of the 11 weeks you send them off, rather like being a proud parent. You have helped someone to get on to the ladder for, in some cases, this is like a dream coming true, it’s all that they have ever wanted, some of these people have waited a long time to get on to the railways and so we have helped them achieve the first part of their dream. For me it’s a proud moment when you see them walk out into the next part of their journey
GWS: Do they have to sit an exam at the end of the 11 weeks? BH: Yes, they have six regular assessments during the time that they are here because the course is split up into modules, some of which are quite heavy; we cover all safety instructions, emergency situations, signalling etc. We must cover all these modules with them, and they sit assessments to show that they have understood it all and are confident about it and what is expected of them as a professional driver.
GWS: Is it all just lectures, or do you have simulators etc?
BH: Yes, we have two simulators down here – one is a 150 simulator and the other a 175 simulator. We can replicate emergency situations – for example, a tree on the line or cattle on the line to give them confidence of knowing how to deal with the emergency situation. We are also waiting for some new simulators that will deal with the new traction units that will be coming online for the Valleys and the main line. It’s an exciting time now, a lot of new kit arriving. TfW have invested in the new XXX depot, there is all the overhead electrification equipment, all the electrification going on in the Valleys, new stations opening. The investment that TfW have put in is immense and will take a couple of years to be complete. Its bringing a lot more positivity about people’s attitudes towards the railways.
GWS: You have been nationalised now.
BH: Yes, we have. It’s going to be good. Obviously, we have been affected by COVID and now everyone is working to catch up. Its exciting times. Spring 2021 GREAT WESTERN STAR MAGAZINE 21
GWS: Did you have any interesting moments when you were driving?
BH: I had a few hairy moments with people deciding to take a short cut home across the tracks because its quicker. I’ve never been involved in a fatality, but I have talked someone out of doing something – I had a chat with him on the platform rather than in the track and got him to walk away. You just must deal with the situation as it is thrown at you but thankfully, it has been uneventful! I have loved every minute of my career so far and this move into training means things have got even better. Long may it continue!
GWS: Bev, thank you for your time and I wish you the best in your new career.
A Trainee TfW Driver
Katherine Williams is one of the next group of train drivers currently undergoing training, having previously had a career in the military police and with South Wales and Gwent police forces.
She said: “It’s been a very welcoming environment; the training has been building gradually and is starting to ramp-up now. It would be great to see more women on the course. For any women thinking of coming into the rail industry I would definitely say go for it, I’m glad I made this jump to this career.”
Earlier this year, TfW appointed Marie Daly to the role of interim Managing Director of Transport for Wales Rail Limited and has recently announced a new partnership with leading gender equality charity, Chwarae Teg. They will provide the organisation with access to a whole host of support and resources as it works towards achieving equality across the organisation.
As part of its commitment to the Armed Forces Covenant, TfW has partnered with an organisation to engage with women leaving the military who may be suitable for a role in the transport sector.
One of the first people to benefit from the link is Beth Powell, who has joined TfW as an assistant project manager in the infrastructure team. She previously served as a mechanical aircraft engineer on the Tornado GR4 in the RAF for eight years.
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“I left the RAF in 2017 after the birth of my eldest son because the thought of having to go on an operational tour was no longer for me,” said Beth. “At the time I thought I wouldn’t have a problem finding a job because of the skills I had learned from my time served within the forces but boy was I wrong! My dream was to find a project manager role, within the rail industry, working Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm and I wanted a role which challenged me but more importantly, supported me. I love my job with TfW, I finally feel valued not only as an employee but most importantly I’m supported to be my main role, which is a mother.”
The LNER Viewpoint
As part of its International Women’s Day feature, the MailOnLine featured four women who opted to change their jobs to become train drivers, including a former neuroscientist and an ex-lawyer.
Three of LNER's female drivers, left to right: Trudi Kinchella, apprentice Vandana Mungur and former neuroscientist Mena Sutharsan (www. charlottegraham.photography
Mena Sutharsan, 36, did a BSc in biomedical science at UCL and then a masters in neuroscience at King's College London. She spent 'ample time in labs' and worked on Alzheimer's for her MSc project. However, after graduating, she decided that 'being a scientist wasn't for me'.
She said: “I thought about a career transition and decided to become a translator. I grew up in France and can speak four languages fluently so I thought that might be something I enjoy. I took a temporary job on the railways through an agency to work in the meantime. It was meant to be for three months and here I am at LNER 13 years later.”
Mena - who drives Class 800 Azuma trains and is also qualified to drive Intercity 125 HSTs and Class 91s – revealed there had been a change in how railwaymen interact with her
over the years. She said: “When I first started, some colleagues would ask a male or older colleague for advice or instructions over me even if I had the more senior position. It wasn't always intentional. Now I see more of a balance and that's been helped by the increasing number of women in senior positions at LNER.”
She described her male colleagues as 'great' and the job as 'challenging and exciting', with 'no two days the same'.
Peterborough-based Vandana Mungur, 23, has diverted from commercial law to become an LNER apprentice. She's pictured here in the LNER King's Cross simulator suite.
She said: “I am the only woman on my training course. I started with nine other male trainee drivers. They don't treat me any differently and we have a great time training together. The amount of information you must take in during the first few months is crazy. We have assessments every week, so you always must be on the ball. There's no such thing as "I'll just get it done tomorrow". It is challenging, especially back at the beginning, trying to balance everything. However, we have revision video calls between us, and our trainers are there every step of the way.”
Finally, there's Leeds-based Azuma-driver Becky Brown. She's been a driver for more than 10 years and said that “most of my colleagues supported me and helped teach me how to become the best train driver I could be. My male colleagues are really supportive, and they see me as a driver, all doing the same job and there for each other.'
LNER's female-driver ranks may be boosted in the future by Becky's daughter, Maisie, who's eight.
From the age of four, she has been adamant that she wants to be a train driver.
Becky said: “From the age of four when at school, she and her classmates had to dress up as what they wanted to be when they were older. Maisie was adamant she wanted to go as a train driver. Most of her peers were dressed as superheroes and princesses.”
The driver who has seen the biggest changes in the female-male dynamic on the railways was Newcastle-based Trudi Kinchella, who has been a driver for 28 years.
She said, “When any doubters saw that I was going to "stick it out", I was finally accepted. I quickly learned that to be seen as half as good you had to be twice as good. I have shown that I am just as capable, professional, and focused and very slowly over the years, probably about 10 years, when any doubters saw that I was going to "stick it out", I was finally accepted. I would say to any woman aspiring to drive for LNER that if you have the aptitude and dedication, then it is an amazingly fulfilling and enjoyable career. Go for it.”
The South Western Railway View
Claire Mann (Credit: South Western Railway)
South Western Railway (SWR) has announced that their new Managing Director, Claire Mann, took up office on the 22nd March 2021.
Claire is no stranger to both the Transport and Railway industry, having worked at the following companies: Heathrow Express – Customer Service Assistant and later Train Driver; Docklands Light Railway; Arriva Trains; First Great Western (rebranded as Great Western Railway); London Overground; and Transport for London – Director of Bus Operations
She has gathered a wealth of knowledge over the years at all these companies, knowledge which is key to becoming a successful Managing Director for a TOC.
While in the recruitment process, Mike Houghton became Acting Managing Director, but will now return to his duties as Chief Operating Officer. Claire will be working closely with Mike and other senior officers, especially as the UK transitions out of lockdown gradually and passenger numbers begin to increase.
Network Rail – Eastern Anglia
One of the Country’s Youngest Station
Managers - Emma Watson used to travel into London Liverpool Street Station every day, and now she works for Network Rail, as one of the country’s youngest station managers, managing the station. As she nears the end of her first year in the role, an unprecedented year at that, and to coincide with International Women’s Day, she shares her experience of being a female manager in a historically maledominated rail industry.
Emma helps thousands of passengers to get to where they need to be every single day. She joined the railway industry by chance, after being made redundant and has been station manager for almost one year. She said, “I thoroughly enjoy working in rail, and I’m so proud of it too. I was temping locally after being made redundant when a friend from school told me where she was working. I asked if there were any jobs going and there began my journey as a data entry clerk in train planning – at the time, I had no idea people actually planned each train journey and it blew my mind. This industry still surprises me on a daily basis.”
Emma loves her job, but it definitely wasn’t an easy start as she was thrown head-first into managing a station during a pandemic which has seen new rules, one-way systems, and measures to keep passengers safe. Emma explains that the support and expertise of her team, many of whom are also women, have helped her through. As part of International Women’s Day, Emma is encouraging other women to join the industry. Emma advises, “Providing you know your stuff and are willing to learn there are many opportunities. I have worked in several parts of the business from freight to projects and even took a couple of years away from Network Rail where I worked for a train operator in property and projects. It has historically been a very male led industry, but I’ve seen a real step change in my 11 years in rail which is refreshing, although I think it’s fair to say that there is still some way to go, and I look forward to being part of that journey.”
In 2017, Network Rail announced its ‘20 by 20’ target, to increase our take-up of female employees across the business to 20 per cent by 2020. The Strategic Business Plan for Control Period 6 (2019-2024) sets out its plan to increase the number of women in our business by 50 per cent by the end of the Control Period and to have gender balanced recruitment of apprentices and graduates.
Northern Trains – Teesside Rail Delivery Group
Teesside train driver turned paramedic.
Teesside heroine - Jolene Miller
A Teesside train driver was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to the NHS during the coronavirus pandemic last year. Jolene Miller has gone above and beyond to keep the railway running and the country moving throughout the pandemic. The Stockton woman's story demonstrates the key work women do in an industry typically associated with men.
From March to the end of June, Jolene was driving Northern trains for one week transporting key workers to their workplace, including driving the route to James Cook Hospital station. She returned to her earlier role of a paramedic with the NHS in the Darlington Memorial Hospital’s Accident and Emergency department as a hospital liaison officer. She triaged patients as they arrived by ambulance, enabling them to get the most appropriate care, and looked after the patients until rooms became available. This allowed the full-time paramedic crews to get back out on the road to respond to the next emergency.
She said: “I made sure I had days off at the end of each week so that I was ready for the next job and help to keep everything safe. It was quite stressful at times, but I enjoyed getting back to working in the NHS – though I think I’ll stick to train driving in the future.”
Jolene worked with the North East Ambulance Service for 12 years from 2006, starting as an ambulance technician, before training to be a paramedic. However, in 2018 she decided she would like a career change and, having seen how much her husband enjoyed his job as a train driver for Northern, decided she would apply too.
She said: “Northern has been amazing throughout this, they didn’t have to let me do it, but they did and have been so supportive of me from the very first phone call I made to HR. It’s a great company to work for and I am glad I made the change.”
Jolene was awarded one of the country’s highest civilian honours in October, last year. The British Empire Medal is given in recognition of service to the community which can include charitable or voluntary activities.
Speaking about the award, she said: “It’s been so surreal, I can’t believe it, I’m really proud but still in shock. There are still lots of people I know working in the NHS and fighting coronavirus day in day out while I spent a few months working back in a hospital. I just wanted to use the skills I had.”
Avanti West Coast - Liverpool
A young woman who thought "only men drive trains" is urging more women to consider pursuing the career.
Trainee train driver Chloe McKinlay said she hoped International Women's Day would inspire people to "challenge gender stereotypes".
A 2019 study commissioned by train drivers' union Aslef found just 6.5% of drivers in Britain were women.
Ms McKinlay, who is following in her father's footsteps as a train driver, said it was "a wonderful career". "Even though my dad is a driver, growing up never once did I think driving was an option for me," the 25-year-old from Liverpool added. "If I can do it, why not you?"
Ms McKinlay, who is a trainee driver with Avanti West Coast, said, “The job carries a lot of responsibility and job satisfaction. As a degree apprentice, I spent some time working with the driver team and I thought why not and on International Women's Day that's the message I'd like to pass on to other women."
Paul Makepeace, head of drivers at Avanti West Coast, said, “The industry faces a potential skills shortage with many drivers expected to retire in the coming few years. The industry needs to develop train drivers of the future, and we're hoping that Chloe's story will encourage more women to seriously consider it as a realistic and achievable career.
Network Rail Eastern: East Midlands
A graduate who joined Network Rail during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been helping to improve the signalling on the Midland Main Line is encouraging more women to consider a career in the rail industry.
Ellie Smith, who is based in Derby, graduated from Warwick University with a degree in Electronic Engineering. Although joining Network Rail in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic meant Ellie completed her degree, then started work from the same desk at home, she has already been involved in vital work to make sure train services can continue running safely and reliably for passengers who must travel.
Ellie has spent the last five months supporting the team carrying out work to replace and repair power cables along the Midland Main Line between Sheffield and London St Pancras International. Some of the equipment is around 50 years old, and these improvements mean the signalling system - the traffic lights of the railway – can work more reliably, reducing disruption for passengers as well as the amount of maintenance which is needed.
Ellie said: “I knew my graduate placement would be different – not because I’m a woman, but because I was starting it right in the middle of a global pandemic. It made it more difficult for me to meet my team and move around different areas, but I’ve loved being involved in these signalling power improvements. When I meet new people outside the railway industry, they’re quite surprised at what I do. I would really recommend a railway career to anyone considering it. I’ve been given many opportunities and lots of responsibility. It’s great to know I’m improving journeys for passengers travelling on the Midland Main Line.”
Across the railway industry, there are many, many more stories like these and Great Western Star is proud to have highlighted just some of them. We make no apologies for the size of this feature for we believe that the efforts, trials, and successes of a wide range of women from disparate backgrounds, have been grossly under reported in the pages of the railway press.
We welcome this opportunity around the time of International Women’s Day in March to try to redress this situation. In addition, we ask any women working on the railways of Britain, to write in and tell their story. Women have shown that they have just as much to offer as men in this industry, once they are given the chance and the rail companies have responded, as shown in this article by offering them the opportunity – Ed.
Apart from the human interest in this story as a female freight train driver, there is another side to this story about Heather Waugh. Although she was already a pioneer through her job, a tragedy from her past inspired her to take on a new mission - getting men to discuss mental health problems. The incident that Heather describes was a life-changing moment and brings home the importance of knowing when to seek help.
Heather and Her Day Job
After school Heather joined the Royal Mail and, by the age of 20, had risen to become the manager of 100 male postal workers. She was on the fast track to greater things, but after a decade with the Royal Mail she felt burnt out. Then she noticed a job advert - ScotRail were looking for train drivers. She knew it would be hugely competitive, but she thought about the camaraderie her father, who had died the previous year, had enjoyed on the railways.
She sent in her application. The process was “like Pop Idol”, Heather says - thousands of applicants, written tests, waiting in a room for her name to be called out and told she’d made it to the next stage. Eventually she was told she’d landed the job. It took two years of intensive training to become a fully qualified train driver - first of all digesting the rulebook and safety procedures, and only after that learning to drive the train - “or more specifically learning to drive the routes, because you do need to drive them blind,” says Heather.
Heather, 44, drove passenger trains for 15 years for Scotrail before switching to Freightliner, her present employer, in 2019. And, after so much practice in the rain and darkness, she could anticipate every gradient and curve of the line ahead. She knew how fast to approach each corner; when to apply the brakes and how long it would take before the wagons at the back would actually start to slow down. This was a job, she’d realised, that matched her temperament. She loved the camaraderie she shared in the mess hall with other drivers and train crew, the sense of the railway as one big family. But the solitude of the driver’s cab suited her, too.
Time to go!
When it was time to set off, Heather briskly pulled a handle towards her: “Star Trek-style”, she said, deadpan, as though she were Mr Sulu putting the USS Enterprise into warp speed. But this wasn’t a spaceship; it was a British Railvintage Class 90 locomotive. Its motors growled,
• Based upon a story by Jon Kelly, BBC News, and
reproduced by permission of BBC News at bbc. co.uk/news Heather Waugh and her beloved Class 90!
then the train shuddered forward. Behind her, container wagons stretched down the line for three-quarters of a mile. It wasn’t Heather’s job to know what sort of cargo she was carrying, just how much it all weighed - tonight, a little under 1,500 tonnes - and whether it included anything hazardous. Her task was to drive the lot of it south through the valleys of lowland Scotland and beyond.
In the cab, with her right hand on the power controller and her left hand on a train brake handle, she was deep in concentration and looked, despite the clatter and din around her, entirely serene. The evening light was fading as Heather approached Carlisle. She eased the locomotive alongside the platform until it came to a halt. The cargo would carry on towards the ports of the south of England. But Heather’s shift was over. It was time to hand over to another driver.
Afterwards, she’d make her way home to Airdrie in Lanarkshire. A few years ago, her mum, who is now 80, moved in with her. Kathleen was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, but her sense of humour is very much intact. “We still have great laughs - she’s still got a crazy Glaswegian sense of humour, absolutely loves that I’m on the railway and that I come home with all these stories,” Heather says. “And she’s got a photograph of me driving a freight train up on
the mantelpiece, which she insists everyone who walks in the room takes a look at.”
Before the journey home, Heather watched the freight train she’d driven leave the platform. It rumbled away from the station and into the night.
Heather’s Life and her family
When she went over to freight, her mother had mostly worried that Heather would be lonely, driving all by herself through the night. Here in the cab, though, Heather felt empowered and trusted. She liked the idea that here, it was just her and the train. Much as she loved rail, it was an industry where her gender set her apart. When she worked on passenger services, she’d been part of a very small minority; now, she was the only female freight driver north of the border. There’d been a time when she hadn’t dwelt much on this. Back then, Heather thought equality was about being treated the same as male colleagues. But recently she’d learned it was about much more than that.
From her window, Heather could see road traffic on M74. “You’re going alongside the motorway at times and looking at the lorry drivers, feeling quite smug,” she said. She marvelled at the fact that her freight train could carry 76 times as much cargo as a single HGV. “When you see a freight train passing by it just looks phenomenal. So, to know that you’re the one that’s actually responsible for that…” She paused. “It’s a great feeling.”
Inside the cab, the number of tasks to remember was endless. It wouldn’t stop, either, when she slowed the train into a station and stepped out. If she met any of her male colleagues, or saw anyone standing around on the platform, she had a checklist to go through with them too.
The railways had always been in Heather’s blood. Her father, Neil, had worked on them for 45 years, as a guard and then as a senior conductor at Edinburgh Waverley station. But it was her mother, Kathleen, who made her fall in love with trains.
“My dad had no sense of humour,” Heather says, affectionately. “He would come home each day, very staid: ‘Oh my God, this happened today.’” But Kathleen would draw out the funny side of all the stories he’d tell them about his work, and she and Heather would laugh uproariously. “My mum’s Glaswegian, so she has a great sense of humour.”
The family lived in a flat in Niddrie, a housing scheme on the south side of the Scottish capital. Thanks to the free passes to which family members of British Rail staff were entitled, Heather’s horizons were always much broader - the Highlands, the Fife coast, across the border into England. “My mum would always take me to different places in Scotland, and I think that’s where my love of the railway comes from,” she says.
Back to work
“The level of concentration is huge,” she says. “You can have 150 stations in a single shift - and if you think, ‘What did I bring for my tea tonight?’ you can miss the braking point for your next station.”
Heather started work at a depot outside Glasgow. She loved the job at once. There was the challenge and the satisfaction of the task itself. But there was also the bond that was formed with others doing the same, highly pressurised occupation. “There are so many things that you can do wrong, and I think that’s why there’s such a bond between train drivers,” Heather says.
Lack of experience didn’t count for much among her colleagues: a newly qualified driver was expected to speak up and intervene if they
Heather heading south with her train of containers!
saw one with years of experience do anything that was unsafe. “They don’t see that you’ve only been doing the job for two minutes and they don’t see you as female - they just see you as a train driver.”
Nonetheless, at her depot there were 106 other drivers, and only one of them other than Heather was female.
“I probably should have been more aware of my gender, but I suppose because of my background - because I had to play football with the boys at school, because I was at Royal Mail - this, unfortunately, was my normal, so I didn’t question it,” she says.
That Life-Changing Moment!
Heather sat in the doctor’s surgery. Everything was coloured in in neutral tones. There was a solitary window. She’d been a driver now for eight years, but she wasn’t on duty now. For the past month she’d been signed off from work. Heather told the doctor about the boy who’d used her train to end his life.
She’d always known something like this could happen - drivers were warned about it in their training and would discuss it among themselves. According to Network Rail, 4.4% of suicides in Great Britain take place on the railways; there were 283 lives lost this way in 2019-20. But nothing could have prepared Heather for the reality of it actually happening to her.
She talked about how numb she’d felt ever since it had happened. How guilt had gnawed at her. All the questions she kept asking herself - could she have reacted slightly quicker? Might she have done anything to save him? Heather told the doctor how horrific it seemed to her that anyone could do that - especially someone so young.
“Actually,” the doctor said, “You’d be surprised at the problems we see with men and boys.”
He was talking about mental health. The doctor’s answer saddened her but having spent her entire career working in heavily maledominated environments, Heather understood what he meant.
“Something I’d picked up on is that men don’t talk about simple things,” Heather says. “It’s not that men have more problems than women, or worse problems. We all have problems. But
women deal with the smaller ones through talking.»
Heather was signed off work for three months. Her employers supported her - she was sent for counselling and hypnotherapy. One of the things that helped her most was the support she received from colleagues. “Big, hard, burly men, who don’t show their emotions, rang me up to say: ‘I’ve been through this too, I’m here for you,’” she says.
When she returned to her duties, she knew she wasn’t quite the same person that she had been before. She was more irritable, less patient than she used to be. She couldn’t watch television crime dramas or anything violent that might remind her of what she’d seen.
“A relationship that I’d been in for probably 19 or 20 years ultimately came to an end,” she says. “And I can now look back and recognise that part of that was as a result of me changing.”
A New Challenge and Mental Health
A few years later she saw another job advert, this time with Freightliner. Moving into freight was a greater technical and professional challenge; what’s more, it offered a rota without weekend shifts. But the gender dynamics were even more stark. At ScotRail female drivers were a small minority, but there were also women guards and ticket examiners. “Now I am entirely surrounded by men,» she says.
Historically, freight had been widely regarded - inaccurately, Heather quickly discovered - as dirty, heavy, physically draining work, and the workplace was exclusively male as a result. “In this day and age, you don’t expect to be the only woman,” she says. “Even with my background, it was intimidating.”
To her surprise, her new colleagues were overjoyed to have her on the team. They’d look forward to her being on shift - not because they wanted to chat her up, but because they could open up to her about their problems in a way they wouldn’t with other men, Heather found. “I’ve had conversations with colleagues where I know I’m the first person they’ve had that conversation with,” Heather says.
All this made her rethink her long-held idea that being treated equally in a male-dominated environment required her to keep her head down and not ask for any special treatment. “I realised that it’s important that you don’t shy away from being a woman,” she says. “Diversity is about bringing different energies into the room. It also brought home to me once again the lack of opportunities men were given to talk about their mental health. Personally, I never stopped wondering about the boy that her passenger train had struck. I always think back to: Was that young boy showing signs? Could somebody have seen those signs?” Sometimes she would visit the town he had grown up in. She’d see young men who would have been around his age and now had families of their own. It brought home to her again the terrible meaning of a young life lost.
Managing Suicidal Contacts
Then Heather learned of a course run by the Samaritans charity in partnership with Network Rail. It was called “Managing Suicidal Contacts” and was offered to all rail industry staff and British Transport Police officers - some 22,000 people had taken it since it was launched. Its purpose was to teach them to identify people on the railways - whether passengers, passers-by, or fellow employees - who might be vulnerable to suicide, and then how to approach them.
To Heather, it was a massive eye-opener. “It’s teaching staff to recognise what is out of the ordinary,” she says. “As human beings it’s our job to go and take five minutes to speak to somebody and say, ‘Are you OK?’” she says. “Since then, I’ve approached people numerous times - you do become aware of when something isn’t quite normal, there are danger signs you can see.” These include unusual body language, staring straight ahead or at the track, and standing somewhere on the platform where you wouldn’t normally go if you were planning to board a train.
It didn’t take much to notice when she was getting through. “Sometimes you’ll be sitting having a chat with someone - a really basic chat - and you’ll see the weight of the world lifted from them.” She’d think back to the boy who died, and wonder if talking could have helped him too.
