depot woman, The

Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Magazine, Jun 2002 by Sadler, Jean

The lady from Kentucky has been a railroading woman for 37 years.

(The text of this article originally appeared in the September 1955 issue of C&O's Tracks magazine, and is augmented here with photographs from the C&OHS Archives-Ed.)

Stepping out of the station was like stepping into a Turkish bath. But, despite the heat and humidity, Virginia Marquette looked crisp and cool in her white dress as she crossed the track to the standing train.

"You look pretty as a June bride today," called down the man in the mail car. He smiled at the lady agent as she signed for that very important mail-her paycheck. "They all spoil me like that," chuckled Virginia, as the train pulled out.

Looking at the C&O agent in charge of the Dayton, Ky., station, it's easy to see why they would.

Thirty-seven years at what is usually regarded as a man's game hasn't robbed this petite, pleasant-mannered woman of one whit of her femininity.

She has no regrets about her choice of a career, either. Her two sisters became school teachers, but Virginia was fascinated by the job held by her brother. That would be John Tong, now retired, then C&O telegraph operator at RU Cabin. He taught her Morse, and in 1918 Miss Virginia Tong became a railroader, an operator on the extra board.

Her assignments were many and varied, but only once did she have misgivings about her chosen calling. That was when she filled in on a job on the now-defunct Kinney Branch. Things were "really primitive" out that way, she remembers but "the people were wonderful."

For a while, she was station agent at Limeville, Ky., at the same time brother John worked the first trick there. Limeville was the railroad station for Tongs, Ky., her home town. And, in case you're wondering, Tongs was named for her family, the addition of an "s" resulting from a Post Office Department error. Virginias great-grandfather was the first postmaster there, a job that has remained in the family for four generations. "Incidentally, Tong is a Scotch name, not Chinese," she explains.

The lady C&Oer's next permanent agency was at Fullerton, Ky., where she remained for 14 years until late 1949 when she came to Dayton, on the C&O main line, five miles from Covington.

Here she "mans" the one-woman station from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., usually spending her lunch hour at home, only two blocks away.

As part of her daily duties, she checks the cars on several industrial sidings. She makes up the bills, delivers them "in person," and periodically collects rentals on local C&O property. To the 10,000 population of Dayton she is truly "Mrs. C&O" although youngsters often identify her as "that depot woman."

"That depot woman" is also a subject for curiosity, she suspects, among other railroads' train crews. A good many wave to her on their way between C&O's classification yards at nearby Stevens and the NYC, B&O, and Pennsy freight yards at Cincinnati. And she wouldn't be a bit surprised if one of them had sent in the query that caused the Cincinnati Post recently to choose her as the subject of one of their regular "Do You Know" features on city and suburban citizens.

In her own company and community, Virginia needs no introduction. She attends every meeting of the Covington Better Service Conference, is an active member and worker in the Railroad Business Women's Association, the Business and Professional Women's Club, and the First Presbyterian Church. She's an ardent supporter of the Payroll Savings Plan, to which she has subscribed from its beginning. The Employer Stock Purchase Plan is another of her enthusiasms, and she's now paying for her third block of shares in C&O. She is, in fact, one of those employer whose expressed interest in such a scheme encouraged the railroad to establish the plan.

Like many another railroader, her chief hobby is travel. She's visited most of the 48 states and parts of Canada and likes to make weekend jaunts as often as possible, in addition to vacation trips.

That love for travel and transportation is an inherited trait. Her father, the late Captain Henry Tong, was a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi and Ohio between New Orleans and Pittsburgh, Pa., in the days, his daughter points out, "before the benefits of dams, locks, diesel engines and radar." She married into the business, too. Before he retired, her husband, Gordon Marquette, was a dining car steward for the Baltimore & Ohio.

Father, brother, husband-the men in Virginia Tong Marquette's family have been in the transportation field. It's no wonder that little "depot woman" is also a good "railroad man."