Local Woman Forges Career At Historic Train Yard
by Matt WeiserAt the age of 23, Angela Stevens was making her living building sandwiches at the Subway fast food restaurant in Ely. Just a few years later, she would be building trains for a living. Not toy trains, but vintage steam locomotives. Angela, an Ely native, is now 31 and has advanced to become trainmaster at the Nevada Northern Railway, the historic railroad that is a top visitor attraction in eastern Nevada. That title means she’s in charge of all train operations and also oversees maintenance of the entire track system.
It’s an exceedingly rare achievement for a woman to hold a supervisory role in railroad operations. Nationally, women make up only 7 to 10 percent of all railroad employees, and they mostly hold administrative positions. The share of women who actually operate trains and tracks is much smaller. “It’s dirty and fun,” said Angela, a graduate of Steptoe Valley High School. “I’ve had a lot of girls who come to ride the train and they’re surprised to see I’m here, and that makes me more excited than anything.”
It all started when she took a part-time seasonal job in the gift shop at the historic East Ely Depot to supplement her Subway income. She had learned some mechanical skills from her father, a mechanic by trade, and in shop class at high school. So she took it upon herself to start fixing things around the gift shop and the depot.
That caught the attention of Mark Bassett, the railroad’s executive director, who offered Angela a full-time job in the machine shop — working on trains. She accepted, even though she described herself as “not much of a train nut.” But she soon discovered an aptitude for the work. Locomotives, she said, are built like 3-D puzzles: Each part is designed to fit into the whole in just one way. She enjoyed figuring that out while repairing and rebuilding the engines. Because of her smaller size, she could also fit into places on the big engines that the men could not.
There were no other women working in the machine shop at the time. Angela also got certified as an engineer, fireman and brakeman to operate both steam and diesel locomotives. “The guys gave me a little bit of crap, but I didn’t let them get away with it,” she said. “They didn’t baby me and didn’t try to push me out, so it kinda worked out.”
She also found she had an aptitude for record-keeping. She kept meticulous records on repairs to the trains and tracks, which helped the railroad pass routine inspections by the Federal Railroad Administration. “The feds had nothing to complain about. That’s really rare,” she said. Today, Angela supervises four employees as part of everyday operations, and as many as two dozen more when trains are running. She has a small office in the historic depot overlooking the railyard and Steptoe Valley, where Nevada Northern trains have operated since 1906.
“Angie has been quite the resource for the railroad,” said Joan Bassett, the railway’s curator and Mark’s wife. “It shows, for the railroad, what we can do with young people, particularly women. Our job is to transfer this knowledge to the younger generation. Otherwise the steam locomotives will be sitting idle — just a piece of steel.”
For more information on the Nevada Northern Railway, visit: