Meet three women who have
embarked on careers in the
rail transportation industry.
This program profiles Brenda
Cox, a yard foreman who
loads and organizes rail cars
for train assembly; Rebecca
Mann, a technical officer who tests the structural and
mechanical limits of rail cars; and France Robert, an
electronics systems technician who performs safety
tests on passenger trains. View a preview video clip
and read below for descriptions of each segment, or scroll to the bottom to
order!
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Brenda Cox is a yard foreman. Brenda
organizes rail cars for loading and
assembly into trains that travel East,
dropping cars off en route. She likens it to
a chess game with extra big pieces to
move around.
Brenda got her start with a major railway
several years ago. She competed against hundreds of applicants and was one
of only 12 people hired. Her first job interview was held at 3:00 a.m., just to
give her an idea of what the shift work was like. She got the idea, and the job.
“What I like about my job is I have a lot of autonomy. As much
as I am given instructions by somebody, it is up to me to figure
out the best way to perform those tasks…”
Brenda is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Her pager may
go off at any time and she will be expected to come to the yard
within 2 hours. As Brenda gains seniority, she will know when
she is going to work ahead of time.
Brenda's rail yard is part of an intermodal transportation network. What does
that mean? Containers arrive by ship and are loaded onto rail cars. These are
eventually unloaded and put on trucks for final delivery, or vice versa. Some
containers are also transported by plane. Four modes of transportation:
intermodal. Coordinating train movement to and from the ship docks is also
part of Brenda's job.
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How would you like to get paid to smash
rail cars into each other? How about freeze
them into something resembling a large ice
cube? Maybe you'd prefer roaring around
in a military vehicle to see what it can
really take? That's just part of the fun at
Rebecca Mann's workplace. She's a
technical officer for the Centre for Surface
Transportation Technology located near Ottawa, Ontario. Her job is to see what
a rail car can really take.
Rebecca did a college field trip to the Centre and was very
impressed with its facilities. So she applied, and applied, and
applied. Finally she got a job in the railway department.
“I prefer hands-on tasks over theoretical work...The tests are
different every time, so it's very interesting and exciting.”
Crashing rail cars together is only part of Rebecca's job. She's
also been able to travel to Germany and the United States on
business. The job's a good fit for the theory aspect of her
university education and the more industry-oriented college
program she attended.
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Have you ever wondered what it takes to
stop a rail car going 160 kilometers an
hour? Just your hand, if it's pushing a
button configured by electronic systems
technician France Robert. France touches
the lives of many simply by doing her job
well.
France assembles and tests electronic systems for passenger trains. It takes a
lot of concentration, attention to detail and patience. Some pieces are very tiny,
so France has to be very good with her hands.
Click the image to the left
for a preview video clip!
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Developed in 2006 in Canada, the Career Options for Women series is an
outstanding resource for schools wanting to attract women and girls to Science,
Technology and Trades!
Please Note: These videos are an excellent depiction of women in these jobs
and are interspersed with Canadian salary and labor statistics, which are
similar to the numbers in the United States. As there is a no-return policy on
these publications, please make sure to look at the preview video clip for the
DVD(s) you are ordering.
Pricing - Career Options for Women: Emerging Technologies DVDs
