PUNCH, SISTER, PUNCH WITH CARE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 153, 29 May 1942, Page 19

PUNCH, SISTER, PUNCH WITH CARE

A Woman Railway Guard Sees Suburbia

HE slow suburban train chugged reluctantly back to town. Inside the carriage the blinds were down and the smoky air quivered in response to the wailing of tired children. It was all tather depressing. Then suddenly the door was flung open and a ringing feminine voice announced " Tickets from » please!" We all sat up, took our feet off the seats. The babies stopped crying. The new assistant snapped her clippers briskly once or twice with an air of practised efficiency, marched through the carriage, and closed the door gently behind her. The babies resumed their wailing, and the pairs of tired feet went back on the opposite seats. A good idea, women on trains, I reflected. After years of listening to the same request for tickets in masculine voices ranging from the squeak of the adolescent to the throaty mumble of the old-timer, the clear voice of the female assistant was a pleasant surprise. And so was her appearance, too- neat navy blue uniform with cromium buttons and an easy-to-wear peaked cap, dark curls, and the right amount of lipstick. Would this be a permanent innovation, I wondered, or merely one of those wartime amenities which vanish with the return of peace? A wartime amenity, the authorities informed me. But to compensate me for my disappointment they introduced me to one of the new female station assistants, Learning About Tickets She began by telling me something of the training she had received for her job. "There are 23 of us here at Wellington," she said. " We began with two weeks’ intensive training in all branches of the work we were going to do. First there’s ticket work. I had really no idea that there was so much to learn about tickets. You have to know all about the availability of tickets, and the provisions for break of journey; and we had practice in ticket-punching and making out tickets for passengers who buy them on the trains." : "The actual writing while the train sways must be rather difficult," I remarked. "Yes," she confessed. "I was rather worried about that, and used to try to practise on the tram going home. But it’s much easier in a train. You have a very hard note-book to write on, and you brace your legs somehow and you find it’s quite easy. While we were training we used to take it in turns being guard while the other girls acted as passengers and we checked up on all the tickets they held, and learnt to punch them in the right place." "TI thought the guard merely punched at random," I said, "but it’s nice to know that it all means something." "| Find it Great Fun" " And it isn’t all ticket-punching," she went on. " Last Friday I was on duty at the luggage room, receiving checked

luggage. And we do things like selling platform tickets, and doing gate duty when the Auckland express goes out. I find it great fun." "What hours do you work?" "We're on a forty-hour week. Of course you’re quite liable to be working Saturday or Sunday, but you get time off during the week." " And what about night duty?" "The earliest we ever have to start is six o'clock, and we never work later than ten at night. It’s a shift system of course. So far, you see, the girls are only working on the suburban lines." "TIsn’t it difficult about transport?" "Most of us will be living either in the city or near one of the suburban stations. It all seems to fit in quite well." The Passengers Like It "And don’t you find it tiring standing such a lot?" " Actually you don’t do much standing. After each station you go through the train saying ‘Tickets from Blank’ and clipping them, and then you can go and sit in the guard’s van or somewhere till it’s time to go through the train again. It isn’t like being on a tramcar where you have to stand all the time. In fact it’s not tiring at all. And you don’t have to struggle through masses of people to get from one end of the carriage to the other." "How do the passengers take to the idea of women on trains?" "They seem to like it, though the first time I went through they all. looked rather béwildered. I was simply terrified. I opened the door and started to say ‘ All tickets please,’ but the words just. wouldn’t come. So I just clicked the ticket-punchers, because quite often the guard just does that, and by the time I got to the next carriage I felt sufficiently recovered to say ‘All tickets please,’ in quite a loud voice. Since then I haven’t felt at all self-conscious, except when some small boys insisted on commenting on my uniform and being rather amused at the idea of a female ticketpuncher. But you don’t really mind that." "Just a Wartime Job" "What sort of jobs have most of the girls had before?" "Most of us, I think, are married women with husbands overseas who like to feel they’re doing something while their men-folk are away. You see it’s just a wartime job, and we know that by doing it we’re probably releasing men who are urgently needed somewhere else. That’s really why most of us took it up. And now that we have taken it up we're finding it great fun. I suppose it isn’t exactly a way of seeing New Zealand, at least you don’t see more than one or two small parts of New Zealand. But you do feel you’re going places, and that’s rather better than just sitting home and waiting. And it certainly has its moments. I'll never forget the first time I gave the guard at the other end of the train the All Sot ‘signal.and sine train started te move,"

"You haven’t any ambition to be an engine-driver?" I asked. She shook her head. "Not at the moment anyway. I’m perfectly happy where I am."