A BOOK devoted to the role played by women in running the country's railways was launched yesterday.

Railwaywomen tells the story of the thousands of women who worked on railways during the First and Second World Wars.

It also describes the first women who worked with trains in the 19th Century and their struggle to be accepted in the almost exclusively male industry.

Author Helena Wojtczak made history when, aged 19, she became the first woman employed as a guard by the former British Rail.

Yesterday, she was at the National Railway Museum, in York, to launch the book, which has taken her 16 years to research, write and publish.

It contains more than 90 pages of previously unpublished photographs from national archives and has a forward by Professor Colin Divall, from the Institute of Railway Studies.

It also features a number of stories and pictures from the North-East and North Yorkshire.

Photographs show track-women tightening bolts in Darlington in 1944, women making concrete sleepers at Darlington in 1942 and women oiling points at Middlesbrough in 1941.

Lily Turner, a wartime sleeper-maker based in York, gives an account of what her job involved.

She said: "We were given mixed concrete on a big palette and several moulds to fill. We shovelled it into the moulds then used a pounder to get it in.

"Once it had settled we trowelled it off to a smooth finish. The following day, we cleaned and greased them ready for use.

"I enjoyed every minute of it."

Yesterday, Ms Wojtczak, from Sussex, said: "When I read the history books, there was just men and no women mentioned at all. I thought I would try and find out if there were any women on the railways -that was 16 years ago.

"There was a widespread myth that few women worked on the railways prior to the 1970s, yet in one book about railwaymen, I discovered that 114,000 women worked on the railways during the Second World War - about the same number as the total staff in 1989."

Railwaywomen is on sale in York's National Railway Museum shop, at www.railwaywomen.co.uk and in bookshops priced £25 for the hardback edition.