The railroads built the West. And men built the railroads. But in many ways, it was women that made them successful. Women have played a huge part in the story of trains, from inventing ways to make them safer to robbing them, and just about everything in between.
Men may have done the survey work and laid the track, but there's a lot more to a railroad than steel rails and flanged wheels. In this episode, author and western researcher Chris Enss and Union Pacific Railroad Museum curator Patricia LaBounty describe the role women have played in railroading, dating from the industry's earliest times. Women were among the first telegraphers, as well as inventors of game-changing devices like the crossing gate and refrigerator car, plus creators of a myriad of inventions and means to make travel more safe and comfortable. Some worked to create a mystic allure of the West as a destination, building an interest in vacation train travel, even serving as railroad-employed tour guides at the destination. As early as the Civil War the loss of men to the military opened nontraditional railroad jobs to women, but the industry's apprentice and seniority systems made it difficult for most to maintain those positions. Not all women involved with the trains were on the railroad payroll, but the robbers and ladies of negotiable virtue all fit into the story as well. Chris Enss is a New York Times best selling author who has written over fifty books about women of the West, and was the recipient of the Will Rogers Medallion Award for best nonfiction Western for 2015. Chris Enss' book on this subject is called "Iron Women" and is available on Amazon. Patricia LaBounty is curator of the Union Pacific Railroad Museum in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the town that is milepost zero of the transcontinental railroad.