The Railway Girls in Love
February 1939. War is looming, but Mabel and her best friend Althea are thinking about parties, not war. For Mabel, the agonies of being presented at court loom large. Althea, meanwhile, has fallen in love with the delectable Gil, only to feel a fool when she realizes that he doesn’t feel the same way. Then Gil falls for Mabel… Meanwhile, Herr Hitler’s bombers plan to destroy Britain’s infrastructure.
In April 1941, the story moves to Manchester, one of Britain’s most important industrial cities, and, as the Blitz gathers pace, it becomes obvious that the railway’s Victoria Station is a major Luftwaffe target. We follow a group of women of all ages and backgrounds who take on railway jobs, once reserved for men – while still being responsible for the housework, cooking, and children. Joan, for example, is a railway porter, carrying travellers’ luggage and manoeuvring heavy goods wherever they are needed. It’s a tough, back-breaking job. Dot, a married woman in her forties, finds herself on a goods train escorting dummy tanks, built to fool the Germans into believing that Britain has an endless supply of military hardware. Doing men’s work is empowering and exciting, but it can also be dirty and exhausting.
One of the things I most enjoyed about this book was the vivid glimpse into ordinary working women’s lives in wartime. Take telephones: most people didn’t own one. They queued up outside a phone box, waiting for the operator to connect them with the phone number they wanted. Most people couldn’t afford the electrical white goods we take for granted nowadays. The book has a huge cast of characters, and I confess that I frequently lost track of who was who, and what was going on. Still, I’m sure that lovers of wartime sagas will enjoy this book.
