Who is entitled to be called a railroader?

As a starting point, he delineates workers who were often denied that designation. Coal miners were never considered railroad workers, even if the mine was owned by a railroad and operated solely to supply its needs.

Even some train crew - porters, Pullman conductors, dining car staff - were not always categorized as railroad workers. Closer to home, Hankey added, "Nobody at the Lima Locomotive Works counted as a railroader" according to government figures.

That meant they weren't entitled to a railroad pass, a railroad pension, or the prestige that went with the title "railroader."

Hankey is a labor historian and a former curator at the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Museum. When he spoke Sunday at the Allen County Museum, he was also speaking from experience as a card-carrying railroader.

Hankey introduced "A Visible Past: Portraits of Work on the Baltimore & Ohio," an exhibit created by the Center for Railroad Photography and Art. The exhibit will remain through September.

In addition to being curator of the exhibit, Hankey is the fifth generation of his family to work for the B&O. His great-great-grandfather was a laborer for the railroad in the 1850s and his great-grandfather was a locomotive engineer. When Hankey, 53, began training as an apprentice fireman, it was on the same engine his grandfather retired from in 1946.

"All I'd ever wanted to do was work for the railroad," he said.

He might still be doing so but for drastic industry-wide changes in the 1970s and '80s that eventually caused the B&O to disappear in a series of mergers. He had been promoted to engineer and aspired, in line with time-honored B&O practice, to move into management. Then it became clear he was among a generation of young, college-educated employees that the company had simply "forgotten about."

Historically, the same fate has befallen the people in some 50 images that make up the exhibit. Rail enthusiasts, Hankey said, are often more interested in the equipment in such pictures than the people.

Displaying a photo of an engine with its crew, Hankey commented, "I know far more about that locomotive than I know about any of those men."

The same sometimes happens in Lima, which retains an ongoing love affair with the steam engines that were turned out for 70 years at the Lima Locomotive Works.

Finding out about the people begins with understanding the hundreds of different jobs required to make a railroad run. In 1900, the government classified anywhere from 5 percent to 7 percent of the nation's nonagricultural work force as railroad workers.

If anything, the true number was higher. But the term "railroader" was often reserved for those who worked on the tracks or the trains. Railroader status, Hankey said, sometimes depended on a worker's likelihood of being maimed or killed on the job.

There were plenty of chances for that. In 1916, an average of 25.6 American railroad workers were killed on the job every day.

Safety had improved by Hankey's day, but the culture was largely intact. He was trained by railroaders who learned their jobs in the 1930s, and who had themselves been trained by men who learned theirs in the 1890s.

"Even when I was out there [on the railroad], it felt like I was doing field research as much as making a living," the historian said.

Between that work and subsequent research, Hankey has seen another side of some supposedly "glamorous" jobs. Back in the age of steam, engineers were celebrities. In many ways, though, they lived "a wretched, miserable life," working six days a week in a dangerous, uncomfortable environment.

"For many people, being a railroader was a job, nothing more, nothing less," Hankey said. Then he added, "But for many, being a railroader also carried with it a great deal of pride, status and personal satisfaction."