The days of greatest mental workload and pressure are the ones that most reward Yalina Peña González. It doesn't matter that the day has been extended for 12 hours of permanent alertness or that, when she leaves her workplace, while the night breeze cools her face, she still feels in her ears the sounds of the intercom. She prefers it that way.
It is true that she arrives home and claims the peace of silence, it is true that reason and feelings express tiredness, but she arrives happy. She enjoys more, she says, the days of coming and going from train to train; those in which she has to have at hand everything she has learned, and at the end of the day, she can feel the satisfaction of the fulfilled duty.
For a little more than 21 years, she has been carrying out an anonymous, risky, complex, useful, and necessary job. "The train movement operator is trained to authorize and track the trains on their route. It is a job that requires responsibility, seriousness and attitude on the part of the person because the life of many depends on who develops this activity.
We must also be prepared to make decisions. A mistake can have drastic consequences," she says, standing very close to the platform today, or at least for now, deserted.
As a rule, she says, it is a complex and arduous job for all operators in general. For women, however, it requires an extra dose of sacrifice that extends to the whole family.
"For us, it's actually more difficult. We carry the burden of work and, after work, the burden of the household. In other words, we are always changing jobs. Also, the husbands and family are to be commended for helping with the children's school, attending meetings, eating.
She knows the responsibility of her position, the anonymity, and complexity of such work; how valuable it is, and how much she protects with her good deeds.
"It is difficult to prepare a worker to be a train movement operator, we must pass a psychometric, then a six-month course, a general medical health check, and a railway safety test, which certifies the person's competence to perform this function. From time to time these tests are retaken and we have to be fit again.
"Machinists, drivers, drivers' assistants and operators need this license, and dispatchers who work on the control of trains on longer stretches also need it," she explains with relish.
Yalina never ceases to emphasize the responsibility involved in this job. So much so that, when she arrives at her post, she says, "you have to disconnect from life and think that only you, your office, the equipment you have there and the work you are going to do exist at that moment because it really requires all your concentration."
"We not only attend the trains but also the intercommunication with the stations, directly with the transport teams, with other workers and around there I could list you a lot of the intensity of the work of those 12 hours. So when I get home, almost always, I want everyone to talk quietly, not to listen to the TV or the radio, I really need a break because I have had an overwhelming day, with a lot of mental wear and tear, but with a lot of professional satisfaction," she says.
Although she trained as a ceramist, Las Tunas Railroad is witness to all her work experience; that which she shares with crew members, operators, mechanics, track repairers, and office personnel.
"Every railroad worker carries in his being this sense of belonging because we love what we do. The work, even though it is intense and exhausting, we like it and we prefer to have many trains because it is more beautiful work. I like doing what I do. I have learned that what you do, you have to do it well, and if you are good, all the more reason to do it well.
