Steven D. Johnson Wrote:
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> I've also read both parts one and two of that
> lady's experience on the SP. I can't claim for
> knowing her conditions, but I did find some
> peculirities in some of what she presented. There
> are many women working out on the rails now, and I
> know and have at worked with at least eight, three
> of which are in management, one of which hired me
> and is now the company's spokesperson for a large
> and important region. Sometimes, people have
> problems and the perception of reality can get
> skewed.
>
The "lady" is Linda Neimann who wrote 2 books, Boomer and Railroad Voices about her experiences as SP/UP switchperson. She wrote 2 articles for Trains, Hospital Yard and the 2-part-er to which you refer above. Linda has a PhD in English Lit from Berkeley and is now teaching at Kennesaw College in Georgia, having left the railroad in '99 due to a combination of age and the ravages of the battle with breast cancer. In her Hospital Yard article she libels several people and in the two-parter, she creates people and situations and experiences by combining parts of people, situations and experiences from her other two books as well as the Hospital Yard article. Assuming the books are real accounts of actual experiences and people, then the articles become mishmashes of combinations of real people and events which are neither fiction nor fact, so you don't know where fact leaves off and fiction begins.
I don't think Linda's writing is a reliable look at what a new employee might find. It is a memoir with all of the emotional and nostalgic overtones thereto attached.
C.
>