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Jon Whaley is in marketing and communications with a major manufacturer of locomotives in North America. From the outside, says Whaley, a locomotive mechanic's job looks like a tough one. "It's dirty, greasy and hard," he says, "because you're up inside of a locomotive! You're tearing engines apart."

Whaley says that being a locomotive mechanic is kind of like being a car mechanic. "But this thing's 70 feet long and weighs 400,000 pounds. You can't move it [so] you've got to move. It's highly physical."

According to Whaley, there's a lot of pressure on mechanics to get the trains in operating order as quickly as humanly possible. "If a locomotive sits for a day, it costs thousands of dollars in lost revenue. So, they're turning these things out 24 hours a day. They're in these shops working all day and all night."

Sounds tough -- and the physical demands of the job may be part of the reason why so few women work as locomotive mechanics.

Joe Bracken is president of a nonprofit agency that provides training for railway related careers. He says there are plenty of women working in railroad industries. However, very few of them actually repair the locomotives.

"Female workers that are in the operation side of things are in network management centers or rail traffic control crew dispatching."

Bracken adds that the railroad industry tends to have an "old way of looking at things." That is, a traditional way of looking at things. Most often, says Bracken, women are found in sedentary office positions, rather than getting greasy under a train in the yard.

He adds, however, that "where women are making some inroads are in locomotive engineer operations."

Programs such as those offered through the Center for Rail Transport and Technology may help to broaden the horizons for women in the railroad industries.

"What we're hoping is that, through schools like this, we start to develop a full suite of programs and...expand the diversity of the workforce," says Bracken.

Linda Stanley is an instructor in a truck and diesel mechanics program. Stanley says that the mechanics industry, as a whole, has lost the machismo that characterized it in the past. This is good news for everyone involved, since it has resulted in safer conditions for the workers.

"The industry prided itself on macho and danger and then we grew out of it. We realized that no amount of money is worth your eye or your back," she says. "Now, you've got safety glasses, you've got earplugs, you've got knee pads. I don't think, nowadays, people look at the trades the same way."

Martha Heimberg works for a rapid transit company. As a media representative, she doesn't fix locomotives or rail cars. However, she stands as an example of the growing number of women working in the industry.

"I came to my job...five years ago, when the agency needed a writer and communicator to help launch the 20-mile light rail system," she says.

With 20 years of experience as a journalist and college English professor under her belt, Heimberg was initially hired to help launch the agency's news magazine, called Inmotion.

According to Heimberg, urban stations are bustling with activity right now -- a sign that the rail economy is healthy. A healthy economy in any industry means more jobs. "The introduction of light rail lines has generated a great deal of economic activity around stations," she says.

While the growth in popularity of light rail calls for more electro-mechanics, good old-fashioned diesel mechanics are by no means obsolete in the railway industry.

"Commuter rail [diesel-powered] remains a popular option in linking cities, since there are fewer stops and you can share a line with existing freight traffic. They both have their place, but light rail is making a big hit with many people because it's clean and quiet and people find it less intrusive running near residential neighborhoods," says Heimberg.

No matter what kind of mechanics you do, locomotives of all kinds are going to stick around for a long time to come. And, as Whaley points out, there is no shortage of railroad companies to work for. "There's over 500 railroads in North America that people could work at," he says.

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