A Woman’s Work Is...On A Steam Engine

 

Instead, the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum fireman spent the day created to honor working men and women on the job, working.

 

And happy.

 

“I love it here,” TVRM’s self-described “token female” steam railroad crew member said candidly.

“I’d like to stay here forever. I have no plans to go anywhere else.”

 

Small wonder.  Her current position – fireman on a coal-fired locomotive – is the job the Seattle, Wash., native has been working toward since she was six years old.

 

The youngest of the three daughters of Rick Burchett, the 34-year-old blonde grew up knowing how much her dad loved trains – and how determined he was to find some he could work on.

 

She was in first grade, she said, when her dad discovered Chehalis-Centralia Railroad & Museum, an all-volunteer non-profit which would let him work on its steam engines. 

 

Before long, she was hooked, too.

 

These days, with activity at TVRM picking up now that pandemic-related restrictions have been eased, Ms. Burchett and the rest of the workers at the railroad museum are staying busy.

 

Over Labor Day weekend, for example, the Missionary Ridge Local made four trips a day, Friday through today (Monday). 

 

Special Dinner on the Diner excursions on Friday and Saturday both sold out, as did the Chickamauga Turn Steam excursion on Saturday. Even some of today’s Missionary Ridge Local trips have run out of seats for would-be riders.

 

That’s music to the ears of the former Washington resident who moved more than 2,500 miles to work on coal-fired steam locomotives here.

 

During the years she was growing up in Seattle, Ms. Burchett recalled, she and her dad regularly spent weekends traveling halfway to Portland, Ore. – Chehalis is 90 miles from Seattle – and volunteering as crew members.

 

Today, almost 30 years later, her dad is “on the CCR&M board (of directors) . . . (and) still volunteering,” she said proudly. “He’s worked as brakeman, fireman, engineer, conductor . . . wherever he was needed.”

 

Undeterred by her youth, CCR&M also welcomed his then-six-year-old daughter into the fold and began training her to work on a railroad.

 

“I knew how to fire an oil burner by the time I was 12,” she explained.

 

Once she was grown up, however, real life intervened. She needed to find a job and begin supporting herself. Eventually, she enrolled in a community college and got a degree in computer programming. For five years, she was employed as a data base operator.

 

Her interest in steam trains remained strong, however. She was active in the Heritage Rail Alliance, a nationwide railroad-related preservation group, and it was that association which led to her first trip to Chattanooga.

 

In 2011, she traveled here to attend a conference hosted by TVRM.

 

Not long after that, she said, she found a full-time job in Colorado working in the steam shop at San Luis and Rio Grande Railroad, where she stayed until she was offered a position on the train operations crew during the filming of the movie, The Lone Ranger.

 

That position, unfortunately, didn’t last long, she said, and she wound up back in Seattle working on computer-related jobs.

 

Her eventual return to Chattanooga, she said, grew out of her interest in learning more about steam engines – particularly coal-fired engines.

 

“Everything west of Colorado is oil-based,” she said. “To work with coal, you have to come East.”

 

She fired off a series of applications for railroad operations-related jobs, including some to TVRM.

 

“At the time,” she said, “I didn’t even know they were hiring. I was applying to be a volunteer.”

 

But in 2018, she said, she received a call from TVRM telling her that the railroad museum was running excursions and needed part-time employees interested in training to become locomotive engineers.

 

Was she interested? they wanted to know.

 

Was she ever!

 

Since then, she said, she’s settled into TVRM and her new life. She has a boyfriend, also a  TVRM employee, and a cat named Mikado “after a kind of steam engine,” she said with a laugh. 

 

This year has been challenging, she said, because of the pandemic. TVRM stopped hauling passengers for a while and both she and her boyfriend were out of work.

 

But things are gradually getting back to normal, she said, and TVRM excursions are attracting passengers.  

 

These days, Ms. Burchett, one of the things she wants to do is let other women and young girls know that they, too, can do what she has done.

 

“A lot of people think you have to be a man to work on a railroad,” she said. “But there’s no reason women can’t do these jobs, if they’re interested – and willing to work hard.”