(The following Associated Press article by Charles R. McCauley was published in the January 22 issue of The Birmingham News.)
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — If women who build trains, connect rail cars and operate locomotives are rare in the male-dominated rail industry, then Susan Gregory is extraordinary.
On Tuesday, Gregory became the first woman to run a Norfolk Southern Railway yard, where trains enter on one side to drop off and pick up rail cars before departing on the opposite side. A terminal trainmaster in Birmingham for six years, she is now terminal superintendent in Sheffield, where she will manage 80 of the 1,030 workers in the railway’s Alabama Division.
“Women are taking on more nontraditional jobs,” said Ed Hauber, the railroad’s Alabama Division assistant superintendent. In Alabama, Gregory, Maria “Cookie” Stevenson, Laura S. Herston and Wendy Pate worked their way up from clerical jobs to supervisory roles at the railroad, Hauber said.
Just 7 percent of Virginia-based Norfolk Southern’s 28,000 workers are female.
Women, however, are making gains in Norfolk Southern’s transportation department as conductors and engineers. And because of increased production at the Mercedes-Benz and Honda auto plants, the company is looking for 15 conductor trainees for the Alabama Division, Hauber said.
Spokeswoman Susan M. Trepay said a hiring session will be held in Birmingham next Wednesday, providing an opportunity for other women to fill railroad jobs traditionally held by men. The recruiting session begins at 8 a.m. at the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel, Hauber said. (Men can apply, too.)
Jasper resident Andrea Crump five years ago became a conductor trainee who rides in the locomotive cab and is responsible for the cars and contents of the train. After training, she became a conductor and has advanced to engineer.
Crump and Birmingham conductors Donna Rotenberry and Karen Zielinski are among 100 women who, according to Trepay, work at Norfolk Southern as conductors and engineers. Crump said she gave up building custom cabinets for an opportunity to move up the ranks.
Pay for conductors and engineers ranges from $17 to $20 an hour.
“They expect you to do the same job as a man would do,” Crump said. After gaining some seniority, she now operates trains at the Norris Yard in Irondale.
“Just because you’re a woman doesn’t mean you can’t do what men can,” said Gregory.
Hauber said the division’s four women supervisors did not take the conductor/engineer route to advance in just a few years. Each has worked for Norfolk more than 20 years. As railmasters, Gregory and Stevenson said they did the same work as their male co-workers, spent time on the road and prepared themselves for promotions by working many jobs. Herston is a trainmaster in Decatur and Pate works in the Norris Yard dispatching center.
“They have to be willing to step up and take the lead … in a male-dominated industry that can be a bit intimidating. Not everybody can do that, but the industry is changing,” Hauber said.
Hired in Knoxville as a clerk in 1979 by Southern Railway, Gregory said the industry is more diverse today than when she started. Managing mostly men generates a lot of stress and pressure but women have to be assertive, something she learned as a yardmaster.
When she became a terminal trainmaster, some men commented about women telling them what to do at home and at work. She said once they learned she was to supervise their work and not tell them how to do it, she gained their respect.
“You have to have very tough skin,” said Stevenson, the first female terminal trainmaster for Norfolk in Birmingham. The Selma native said some men doubted her ability initially but she kept an open mind, set goals and worked to achieve them.
“I got hooked on the railroad,” she said.