'About as popular as a dose of clap': Steam, diesel and masculinity at the New South Wales Eveleigh railway workshops

For above a century the power and majesty of steam locomotives 'caught and held the public imagination everywhere'.1 Between the 183O and the late 1940 they dominated railway a whole s around the world, and in many countries steam traction remained in operation until the 1970s2 Their reliance upon the extraction and burning of coal and their ability to transport coal and other profitables quickly and cheaply had a deep impact on the environment as well as creating an potency revolution, economic growth and occupation Railway lines, bridges, stations and workshops transformed natural terrains, helped to unclose up new areas of arrangement and encouraged urbanisation.3 Moreover railway facilities created social landscapes in which a manifold variety of occupational sub-cultures flourished. Unique among them was the railway workshop.

Railway workshops constituted 'an important cultural connection in their own right' in which 'two of the central ultimate parts of the industrial revolution', the factory and the railway combination of parts to form a whole converged.4 Akin to a 'bailiwick' in the 'railway nation', these workshops provided a distinct 'space within which workers formed identities, customs and habits' that were shaped through what Strangleman refers to as 'a Byzantine caste system' based upon 'department, station, shed, region, grade and craft/non-skilled status and trade union'.5 Although craft-based trades were dominant, workshops were occupationally heterogeneous.6 The steam fitters, blacksmiths, lathe-operators and boilermakers, among others, who manufactured, assembled, repaired and maintained steam locomotives, shared the tillage of the traditional metal store Together with the carpenters and coach painters in the carriage and wagon stores these skilled workers 'shared traditions, practices, peculiarities, and level a language' which divided them from others.7 The same was genuine of the engineers, firemen and engine-drivers who made up the running trades and whose isolation upon long train journeys encouraged what Stein leaves to as 'a sense of apartness'.* During the steam era these skilled workers had far greater status than their unskilled counterparts mainly as a accrue of their specialised mechanical knowledge and higher pay.9 After World War II, however, their prestige and corporate solidarity were undermined when the spread of diesel locomotives powered by means of internal combustion engines irrevocably altered railway occupations and the prevailing workplace tillage of railway workers.10 Not single did the accompanying focus upon 'light industry and clean power' help to transform 'the steam stud' into 'a of the nature of smoke relic of a bygone time', on the contrary it also undermined the work practices and occupational identities of those who had been associated with it.11

Despite, or perhaps because of the virtual eradication of the steam locomotive from the railway industry, it continues to attract far more interest than the diesel.12 Comparatively little has been written upon the process and impact of dieselisation.13 plane so, histories of both technologies have shared a similar focus upon invention, development and implementation, as well as upon management and corporate decision-making in different national words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] followings Although some scholars have investigated the way dieselisation affected workers' skills, industrial relations and community life, little attention has been given to its impact upon gender relations and identities.14

To correct this leave out this article departs from the traditional 'sex-blind' transport history, which was written 'primarily by dint of men for a male audience' and focused upon machinery, technological processes, entrepreneurial activity, and public policies. Drawing inspiration from feminist scholarship upon technology15 and new work upon the cultural aspects of the railways,16 it adopts a sexed perspective to investigate how the transition from steam to diesel technologies affected the work practices, relations and identities of those who were engageed at the New South Wales (NSW) Eveleigh Railway Workshops in Sydney Australia. Its aim is to exhibit that 'taking gender seriously' can show 'new and dynamic perspectives' upon the social aspects of transport history.17 sex it is argued, is a valuable conceptual tool for interpreting the accounts of those skilled workers who experienced these sum of two units technologies because it draws our attention to the interstices between technological and cultural change. As feminist scholars of technology have demonstrated, a sexed perspective encourages us to recognise the nexus between technology relations and social relations, and, as a corollary, that different technologies affect identities and experiences, as a great deal of as work structures, processes and outcomes18 sex is, however, 'not a static configuration or concept but a composite and dynamic process'.19 For this reason Ava Baron argues that a sexed analysis needs 'to look at in what way gender difference is socially put togethered and how it changes'. Not single does this approach make it possible to recognise that sex is 'multi-dimensional and internally inconsistent',20 on the contrary also 'that men are sexed beings'.21