Ukrainian ‘Railroad Ladies’

[John Ashworth]

Ukrainian ‘Railroad Ladies’

Ukraine’s traffic controllers and safety officers are a kind of lighthouse: a symbol of how certain things in this country stand firm in the present as a defiant nod to the past...

people here pay little attention to the women they see from their train windows, standing at attention at railway crossings and often holding a folded yellow flag — a sign to the train engineer that all is well on the tracks ahead. In Ukraine, railroad traffic controllers and safety officers — about 80 percent of whom are women — spend long shifts in small dedicated buildings beside the tracks... Railroad crossings in Ukraine are almost fully automated — and yet the railroad women persist. They act as a kind of safety net, one that, for now, the Ukrainian railway companies have deemed as still necessary...