RIDING THE RAILS
Meet Yolanda, Auckland’s only female train driver!
My family came to New Zealand from South Africa in 2008 as it felt very unsafe at that time.
When I was five I started ballet lessons. It was my dream to be a dance teacher, but years of ballet took its toll and I ended up having an operation on my back which meant not being able to finish my teacher’s exam.
Before we moved, I had been working as a legal secretary, but finding work in that field here was more difficult than I expected – the legal system in South Africa is different to the system in New Zealand.
My dad saw an ad in the local newspaper for train conductors working on the passenger trains, so I applied and got the job. I worked as a part-time clippie for 18 months before I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, I think I’d rather be driving the trains!’
Being a clippie was fine, but it could be demanding – especially when the trains were running late or something else had gone wrong. You get blamed for that! But I decided to make the leap to driving because it seemed like a cool job, plus it was a new challenge.
I’m the only female train driver for KiwiRail in Auckland. There’s no special treatment and, to be honest, I don’t think the blokes realise I’m a girl.
They don’t change their language or behaviour −
I’m just one of them.
I did four or five months of theory in the classroom, learning everything from the safety rules and regulations to the mechanics of train driving, and how to fix equipment faults. After that, it was on-the-job training, which for me was 500 hours. You have a minder driver at first, a bit like having a driving instructor, and then it’s just you in the cab.
A month into being on my own, I was involved in a fatality near Mt Eden Station. It was 2011. I was driving a passenger train, there was a freight train coming in the other direction and there was someone just standing in the middle of my track looking at the freight train.
I blew the horn and slammed on the brakes, but despite all the noise he obviously didn’t see or hear me. I couldn’t bear to look. Even after all these years, every time I drive that crossing I remember it − that they were someone’s child or parent.
The accident made me so much more aware of what to expect. But, still, every time I have a near miss or someone does something stupid, my heart stops beating for a few seconds. It’s unbelievable what some people do – you see the most foolish things.
I drive freight now, between the depot at Otahuhu and Hamilton. And I do the local shunts between the ports and the depot, picking up containers from the ships that have everything in them from onions and liquor to televisions and washing machines.
People think you just sit in the train and it goes, but it can be pretty challenging. I’m thinking the whole time about keeping this long, heavy train – up to 2000 tonnes and 800 metres long − on the tracks so I don’t end up on the motorway or somewhere in the bush.
No two days are the same. One day I’ll have a great ride just listening to music in the cab, the next I’ll have people doing all sorts of crazy things in front of me, or the train will break down and I have to get out and fix it in the dark.
I never get bored, though. Nature is amazing – the scenery is always changing. I see sunsets, sunrises and the other day I saw all these little lambs!
I enjoy the solitude. There’s no office politics either because there’s no-one to have politics with. I just argue with myself if there’s an issue. Plus, I have a uniform so I don’t have to worry about what to wear every day.
I don’t have my own train per se, so I can’t turn the cab into my own little space. My hair straighteners have to stay at home (actually they would be a health and safety issue), but there are little microwaves and kettles to boil water, and they give you a flask so you can have coffee and snacks while driving. There’s no toilet though, you just have to hold on.
Most of our work is at night and at weekends. I don’t think I could ever go back to a 9 to 5 job again. The shift work means I do get tired and my poor body doesn’t know if it’s day or night, but I love it. In my spare time, when I’m not tired, I try to go to the gym as much as possible given that I sit a lot. Other than that, you’ll find me at the movies or, in summer, lying on the beach in the sun, napping.
When people find out I’m a train driver, the usual reaction is, ‘No way, really?’ Then it’s 100 questions. It’s not every day a dainty ballerina/dancer decides to drive big locomotives!”
BEFORE WORKING ON LOCOMOTIVES, YOLANDA KRUGER (38) DREAMED OF BEING A BALLET TEACHER