Jennie reaches destination after epic train journey
MANY men are interested in railways, and some have written books about them, but Jennie Street has gone down a virtually unknown line. A woman writing about a publication about trains? And about the rail network in a country in the Horn of Africa?
Jennie – renowned for her enthusiastic rallying of the community in Totley, where she lives – has spent the past ten years compiling Red Sea Railway.
She decided to write the history of the Eritrean Railway not because she is a railway enthusiast but because she was inspired by how the country pulled together to get the trains going again after a devastating war with Ethiopia.
Jennie lived and worked in Eritrea before and after Liberation in 1991 and started the book to record some of the stories of the men who worked on the line.
Some of them were in their 70s and 80s, helping to reconstruct 117km of line that had been destroyed in the war, which saw sabotage and ambushes and rails used in the trenches on the frontline.
A new government wanted the railway to be a symbol of self reliance, even rejecting the chance of using European funds. So there was a stirring story to be told.
Some rail experts, though, told Jenny in no uncertain terms that a woman without any technical knowledge should not even attempt such a book.
Publication has confounded the doubters and the reaction has been positive, she said. "It's been wonderful. I was very nervous about how the railway fraternity would view it. "One man from Germany told me I shouldn't even try to write a book about railways. But I have had some very good comments from senior people in the railway world, including a professor of transport history in Italy."
It's an offshoot from Jennie's usual world of working with Totley Residents Association, organising the Totley Show and opening her garden in The Grove to the public as part of the National Gardens Scheme.
Her literary subject was bound to raise eyebrows. "Women tend not to be the ones interested in railways and they don't tend to write books about them. It's the little boys who become train spotters."
Yet she persuaded the general manager of the Eritrean railway to be her co-author and their collaboration across continents has paid off.
Jennie has presented all the 'nuts and bolts' of locomotives, track, rolling stock and gauges, aided by the generous railway enthusiasts from across the world, "who probably thought they were coming to the aid of a damsel in distress."
The book involved extensive research in archives in Khartoum, Asmara, Rome and London, interviews with elderly Eritreans and searching the internet for photographic and documentary items.
With her husband, John Beazer, teaching himself book layout skills, Jennie, aged 58, ended up publishing the book herself. As a Sheffielder Jennie asked Starprint, of Abbeydale Road, to print the book.
Comprising 374 pages, 385 photographs, 71 illustrations and 19 maps and weighing in at 1.3kgs, it has proved a mighty undertaking.
But she stuck at it.
"There were days when I didn't open a file and days when it was very intense," said Jennie, who is a voluntary learning advisor with the south west Sheffield community assembly and is currently trying to set up a horticulture project in Bolsover.
"Ten years is a long time. I don't think my friends thought I would do it…"
Red Sea Railway costs 29.99. Contact Jennie on 236 2302 or see the website www.redsearailway.co.uk
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Wednesday 23 May 2012
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