I’ve shown several photos of women employed by the railroads during the war years of the 1940s, many of them as engine wipers. I came across this Jack Delano photograph recently that I didn’t recall having seen before. After studying it for awhile, I realized that I had seen both this locomotive and several of these ladies in other images.

The scene is at the Chicago and North Western’s roundhouse in Clinton, Iowa in April of 1943. The locomotive is an “H” Class 4-8-4 steamer, the number 3034. The team of ladies are coming out to wash and wipe down the locomotive. At left, holding an oil can is Mrs. Dorothy Lucke, and at center, also holding an oil can is Mrs. Marcella Hart.

Mrs. Hart, along with another lady Mrs. Viola Sievers, was previously seen in a photograph climbing the stairs of the locomotive. In another image Mrs. Sievers is again shown washing the locomotive’s running gear.

This image shows the ladies having their lunch in the lunch room. Mrs. Hart is the lady at left wearing the red head scarf. Mrs. Sievers is the third from left on the far row. An unidentified lady present in the photo above (at far right) is also seen in the lunch room photograph, the second from left on the far row.

I surely wish all of these ladies had been identified so that their memory would be coupled to this photograph.