When Helena Wojtczak mentioned to a male fellow railway researcher that she was writing a book about railwaywomen, he told her that she was wasting her time. Women have played no significant role in the history of the railways, he said. Despite many such put-downs, Wojtczak persevered and has produced this excellent book, which will confound all those who think the role of women in the rail industry extended only to helping out during the First and Second World Wars.

In fact, women have a rich history of involvement, even if they have largely been confined to the "three Cs" of catering, clerical work and crossing-keeping. The first women crossing keepers were employed in the 1850s. By 1926, they outnumbered men, but suffered blatant discrimination in both pay and conditions. In 1950, men were paid 80 shillings for a six-day week; women got 27 shillings. While men were restricted by law to a 12-hour shift, female keepers often worked 16 hours or more. Wojtczak's meticulous research uncovers early railwaywomen working in other, unexpected places: as engine cleaners, workshopwomen and goods porters. She herself was a pioneer in this regard, becoming the first guard to be employed by British Rail, in 1978.

This is true hidden history, revealing a story that male chroniclers have glossed over. Wojtczak cites many incidents in which railwaywomen were involved, only for their roles to be ignored. For instance, among those who helped out in the chaotic aftermath of the 1942 bombing of Bramley Station in Surrey was a porter named Violet Wisdom. According to the male writer who chronicled the incident, however, it was a fireman who "singlehandedly attended the injured".

Wojtczak also shows how Railnews, BR's staff newspaper, perpetuated the myth that women had little place in the industry. Even in the post-equal rights era, it persisted in describing any woman who broke into a new area of employment as a "pretty brunette" or "curvy blonde".

The unions come out particularly badly. They were more concerned to protect railwaymen's rights than to recognise that women also had the right to a decent wage. They actively discouraged women from taking certain jobs, often on such patronising grounds as that "their busts would get in the way" or "it would damage their health". As recently as the 1960s, the trade unions themselves discriminated against women, paying female clerks half as much as their male counterparts.

Even though both world wars offered women temporary opportunities, in peacetime they quickly lost much of the ground they had gained. Wojtczak shows that it was not married women earning "pin money" who took railway jobs in wartime, but those with no other means of support. Although many were war widows, they were ruthlessly culled from jobs they desperately needed so that male "breadwinners" could take them back.

This is more than a history of women's involvement in the railways. It is a carefully documented story of discrimina-tion, reminding us that the whole idea of women working on equal terms with men is still new. The Sex Discrimination Act came into force only 30 years ago, and attitudes were slower to change than the law.

However, Helena Wojtczak celebrates the way "ultimately, railwaywomen have triumphed": they now have equal pay and equal opportunities. Indeed, four women currently head train operating companies. Nevertheless, Neanderthals still stalk the railways. Keith Norman, the general secretary of Aslef, dismissed this book with the comment: "I doubt anyone will read it, anyway." I hope he is wrong.

Christian Wolmar's On the Wrong Line: how ideology and incompetence wrecked Britain's railways is published by Aurum Press

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