Iron Women: The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

Iron Women: The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad

Chris Enss
$19.95
Publication Date: March 1st, 2021
Publisher:
Two Dot Books
ISBN:
9781493037759
Pages:
200
Usually Ships in 1 to 5 Days

Description

**2022 Will Rogers Medallion Award Silver Winner for Western Non-Fiction**

Although the physical task of building the railroad had been achieved by men, women made significant and lasting contributions to the historic operation.

Starting in 1838, women were hired as registered nurses/stewardesses in passenger cars. Women also played a larger part in the actual creation of the rail lines than they have been given credit for. Miss E. F. Sawyer became the first female telegraph operator when she was hired by the Burlington Railroad in Montgomery, Illinois, in 1872. Eliza Murfey focused on the mechanics of the railroad, creating devices for improving the way bearings on a rail wheel attached to train cars responded to the axles. Murfey held sixteen patents for her 1870 invention. In 1879, another woman inventor named Mary Elizabeth Walton developed a system that deflected emissions from the smoke stacks on railroad locomotives. She was awarded two patents for her pollution reducing device. Their stories and many more are included in this illustrated volume celebrating women and the railroad.

About the Author

Chris Enss is a New York Times best-selling author who has been writing about women of the Old West for more than twenty years. She has penned more than forty published books on the subject. Her work has been honored with five Will Rogers Medallion Awards, an Elmer Kelton Book Award, an Oklahoma Center for the Book Award, and was a Western Writers of America Spur Finalist. Her book The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency has been optioned by NBC is currently in development to become a television series. Enss's most recent work is According to Kate: The Legendary Life of Big Nose Kate Elder, Love of Doc Holliday.