Level Crossing Guards
No. 19 FEBRUARY 2017
This book is a portrait of a profession on the verge of extinction – the level crossing guard. It talks about women who work near the railway line, sometimes in remote and inhospitable places, and whose mission is to ensure that trains pass through the level crossings safely. It is a book with scraps of the history of the railways taken from the testimonies and accounts of women whose life stories – some dramatic – tell us about what life is like for those working in the lowest ranks of the railway hierarchy. Anonymous characters doing solitary and almost invisible work are the anonymous heroines of the safety of people and goods: the flag or lantern they raise when the train is coming signals that the train can pass there safely. It is also work that was little valued, lonely, working shifts, routines where strict compliance with regulations and superhuman infallibility are fundamental to safety. The author also looks at the lives of the railways and one type of railway line that is disappearing: telephone cantoning (calling ahead to the next station for permission to travel onwards), the lines where modernisation has not yet arrived or that will one day be closed, and where safety of circulation depends essentially on human resources.
This book is a portrait of a profession on the verge of extinction – the level crossing guard. It talks about women who work near the railway line, sometimes in remote and inhospitable places, and whose mission is to ensure that trains pass through the level crossings safely. It is a book with scraps of the history of the railways taken from the testimonies and accounts of women whose life stories – some dramatic – tell us about what life is like for those working in the lowest ranks of the railway hierarchy. Anonymous characters doing solitary and almost invisible work are the anonymous heroines of the safety of people and goods: the flag or lantern they raise when the train is coming signals that the train can pass there safely. It is also work that was little valued, lonely, working shifts, routines where strict compliance with regulations and superhuman infallibility are fundamental to safety. The author also looks at the lives of the railways and one type of railway line that is disappearing: telephone cantoning (calling ahead to the next station for permission to travel onwards), the lines where modernisation has not yet arrived or that will one day be closed, and where safety of circulation depends essentially on human resources.
More details
Dimensions
8 × 130 × 200 mm
ISBN
978-989-8838-95-7