Helena Wojtczak (pronounced 'VOYT-CHAK') was born in Sussex and grew up in London. At the age of 19 she became the first woman employed as a guard by British Rail. Working in the industry led her to research and, later, to write about railway labour history. Her book Railwaywomen will be published in 2004.

Now Britain's foremost authority on the history of women railway workers, she has been consultant historian to the National Railway Museum and a contributor to The Oxford Companion to British Railway History.

Helena has a BSc Honours degree in the Social Sciences, (majoring in Psychology) and Social History. She has written three books on the lives of both ordinary and notable Victorian women and has created a website called Women of Hastings and St Leonards - a social history containing many details about life for women in a typical English south coast town in the mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

She has written for the Oxford University Press, the Hastings Press, Hunter House Publishing, the Hastings & St Leonards Observer, The Warrior Magazine, The Victorian Web and Encyclopaedia Titanica.

In connection with her own railway career, Helena has also written The Recruitment and Training of the First Female Guard on British Rail .

Some photos of Helena as a guard.

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