The White Pass & Yukon Route Railway has operated out of Skagway for over 124 years. It regularly travels between Skagway and the Yukon, a scenic trip that is one of Skagway’s top attractions.
But one day in mid-October was special. That day an all-female crew drove a train full of tourists up the mountain, creating history.
On Oct. 15, approximately 600 chilly sightseers climbed aboard the White Pass train for a brief international ride through the Yukon.
Both the brakeman and the conductor who helped them aboard were female. Also on duty was Lindsay Breen, White Pass’s first woman engineer.
“I was the second female brakeman, second female conductor,” Breen said before departing from Skagway’s Ore Dock. “I was the only one who stayed long enough to get trained as an engineer.”
Breen has worked for White Pass for 12 years. She fell into her profession almost accidentally.
“I am one of those people that came up for one summer, way back in 2001,” she said. “And here I am, 23 years later, married, kid, all the things. I just fell in love with Skagway and this community. Never thought that this is where I would end up. It wasn’t like a dream of mine – I didn’t play with train cars as a little kid or anything like that.”
Breen started as a train agent, then a dock representative, then she transferred to coach cleaning. Eventually she worked her way up to brakeman, conductor, then engineer.
A White Pass train is run by three crew members. The engineer operates the train. The conductor is in charge of the entire train, helps load and unload passengers and decides when to leave. A brakeman is the assistant to the conductor.
Breen described trains as “big, loud and obnoxious.” She said that blowing the piercing train whistle isn’t just for fun.
“I really sometimes don’t enjoy doing it, especially when you’re yard crew at 5 a.m. and bringing trains down and everyone’s still in bed,” she said. “But they’re actually part of our rules book. And so it is a federal requirement of what your whistle means. So, when we’re going across crossings, that’s when you hear what we call long and short. So, long, long, short. Long is coming through a crossing. Two shorts is you’re going ahead. Three is backing up.”
Breen’s days can sometimes be very long – 12-hour shifts with three trips up the mountain. But she said she loves it.
“I didn’t realize how much I would actually like the engineering job,” Breen said. “It’s a really cool job to have. And I just strive to make it as good as I can every day. Every run.”
Breen is incredibly proud of the two women on her team, and all the women she works with.
“It felt, can I say bad ass? That’s kind of how it felt,” she said. “It was really neat that it was finally happening. It took long enough.”
Eliza Myers was the conductor. In her early 20s, she already knows that she wants to be an engineer after an experience that happened in 2022.
“One of the trainmen, who’s actually a friend now, had me come up into the cab of the locomotive,” she said. “I sat in the seat, and I was like, ‘Whoa. This is really cool.’ And they took a photo of me. And I was looking back at that photo the other day, because one day I will become an engineer. And I think that just really sparked my interest. That just being in it, and seeing the whole operation. Because I didn’t really think about it beforehand. I wasn’t like a little kid watching Thomas the Engine.”
Myers started out at White Pass at the ticket office and as a dock representative. She became a brakeman in 2023. There is no non-gendered term for the position. Myers said that’s okay with her.
As conductor, she is responsible for the safety and timeliness of the train, which sometimes means politely redirecting intoxicated train ticket holders back to their ship.
Myers said she loves the formal aspect and exactness of train etiquette. For example, the suit uniform and the protocol of radio communication.
“When you are talking to someone and they tell you something, you can say ‘Roger,’” she said. “You don’t really say ‘Copy that,’ because copy that technically means that you have specifically written it down and copied what they said.”
Myers said that she sometimes gets sexist comments from visitors, but has received only support from her employers.
“So, I’ve never felt from my co-workers or from management specifically that like, ‘Oh, I’m a girl, like, I can’t do this job.’ Or you can’t be hired because you’re a woman. I never felt that way with this company, which I really appreciated. It feels very empowering to be accepted,” Myers said.
White Pass currently employs five female train crew out of a total of 29. Two of those are engineers.
