We sat down with our new Head of Technical Education, Molly Dalton, to learn more about her journey into railway engineering, her hopes for the role, and her reflections on inclusion and inspiration as part of International Women in Engineering Day 2025.
Molly, you’ve spoken passionately about how your early experiences shaped your connection to the railway. Can you tell us more about how your personal and family background has influenced your career journey?
Well, I am the daughter of a train driver with 34 years of service in the industry. It was fairly inevitable that my early experiences of the railway would shape my future path. In fact, both me and my brother caught the railway buzz, and he is also now a MOM! We would often on a Sunday morning get the first train into London to wander around before London woke up. I have very fond memories of those experiences, and this has extended into my adult life where if there is an opportunity to see some heritage stock, or get to a vantage point to see the track from above (or below Ribblehead Viaduct), I am never usually far away. I am so proud of my Thameslink career which saw me planning staging designs for track installations from design through to construction that my dad had been driving over for all of his working life.
My career so far has been varied. It has seen me work on railway from Northumberland to Charing Cross station. I have installed S&C panels to millimetre precision using rail-mounted cranes, and was part of a team who installed 71 miles of O-gauge model railway along the Great Glen Way and the Caledonian Canal from Fort William to Inverness. My MEng thesis was all about the circular economy, evaluating the impact of early design decisions to reuse signal gantries, compared to building structures new. Now, 10 years later, the need to be sustainable in our choices and innovative in our approach to our asset management, has never been greater, as the impacts of Climate Change on our railway are starting to become more frequent and severe. I am endlessly fascinated by the complexity of our track system, and trying to balance, often conflicting, requirements. The railway really is the dream of anyone who is keen to problem-solve, I guess I was always going to end up here. I am looking forward to continuing my railway journey working for an organisation whose sole purpose is to bring railway people together.
It is quite funny to look back as someone who once had a place to study Nursing, which then became Civil Engineering, and now Railway Engineering Education – and wonder how I got here! Then I remember I was always that child who loved to build things, who would stare endlessly at skyscrapers and wonder how they had been built, and took any opportunity to get near an engine. My thirst for knowledge and to fix things was innate, however I was also fortunate to have parents who encouraged those interests, buying puzzles and taking me on heritage lines and to the London museums. I hope anyone reading this with interest, but perhaps without the privilege of having their interests supported, reads this and wants to give engineering a go!
As we mark International Women in Engineering Day, it’s the perfect time to reflect on the importance of inclusion, collaboration, and visibility across the profession. This year’s theme, Together We Engineer, invites us to consider how we can work collectively to build a more diverse and equitable engineering landscape. With that in mind, we asked Molly to share her thoughts on the value of community, mentorship, and how we can better support women in engineering, especially within the rail industry.
Molly, this year’s INWED theme is Together We Engineer. What does that mean to you personally and professionally?
Diverse teams achieve more. It is widely accepted for more reasons than I can list here. No single person can achieve in engineering on their own. While from the outside of large projects the scale may not be widely understood, actually, there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of people, all completing daily tasks that keep the wheels in motion! Huge railway projects are not successful without those deconfliction meetings, where others come in to healthily challenge. Have we got enough time? Have we got the right resources on standby for these scenarios? From having a storesperson on standby to go and pick up a spare total station from 5 miles away in the middle of the night to keep a tamper tamping, to knowing who to call when a machine breaks down in the middle of a construction site, there is always someone in the background actively taking steps to keep the project on track. It is so fitting that this year’s theme is all about ‘togetherness.’ Engineering simply isn’t successful without it!
Have you had any mentors or role models who helped you along your journey, and how have those relationships influenced your own leadership style?
I’ve had so many positive influences in my career so far – too many to count. People who have believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. People who actually weren’t officially mentors at all, but whose tenacity, drive and kindness have inspired me to be the same. My leadership style is undeniably situational. It is quite impossible to ‘turn off’ an engineering mind in leadership situations. I adapt my leadership style to the needs of the team and the situation we are in. I am a people-person, and my teaching career has influenced my reflective practice. Together, these influences have made me always strive for the best results, while making sure others feel part of that journey.
What do you think the industry needs to do better to support and retain more women engineers, especially in rail?
Flexibility. While I accept there is often a component of engineering which has ‘fixed’ parameters, such as things needing to be done at a certain time of day, or at a particular geographical location, I think our biggest hope to attract more women to rail, would be in trying to say yes more often. Rather than giving a list of dated job requirements, such as 40 hours a week in an office, we should look to say yes to specific requests as a default, reserving the no for situations where, as a business, we really can’t accommodate something. It is widely published that parenting and caring responsibilities, though increasingly becoming more shared, disproportionately impact women’s access to the workplace. I wonder if we rewrote job adverts to be more flexible to women’s individual circumstances, how many more women might be attracted to our industry.
If it can be done at night while children sleep, let it be.
If it doesn’t need to be done from a site office, don’t make it be.
If it can be done while a woman is breastfeeding, it should be.
When we look closely at all the reasons why a woman might find it hard to start and stay in a career in rail, and take steps to overcome them, then we will have done better to attract and retain them.
What advice would you give to young women or girls considering a career in engineering?
To any young female looking towards a career in engineering, I would say go for it! It is the most broad and diverse job you can ever have. No two days are the same, and there is always a problem to solve. I would encourage them to remember the power in taking 5. Very rarely are engineering problems unique, and there is always something to be learnt from a parallel discipline or another environment with complex, multi-layered challenges.
Engineering is everything around us which makes our lives better, from the chemical engineers who manufacture essential household items like toothpaste and medicines, right through to the mechanical engineers who design our cars, and the buildings systems engineers who keep our homes and offices comfortable. You really don’t have to look too far to see the influence of engineers all around you. If that excites you, come and join us!
Finally, I would say that I can’t answer this question without reference to the ‘typical’ responses I always see, like be ‘bold’ or be ‘brave’ or be ‘insert adjective.’ The reason I say this is because quite the opposite is true. Engineering doesn’t need you to be more anything at all. Engineering just needs more of you. More women. Just as you are.
Molly, to end on a personal note, what would you like others to take away from your journey as you step into this new chapter with the PWI?
I hope that in this new role, I will continue as a teacher to inspire people to strive for life-long learning; as a passionate Track Engineer to share my knowledge with all of the PWI community, and as a mother to continue to support the ongoing success of the railways of the UK and beyond, for my daughter, and future generations. I hope they get to enjoy the railway network just as we have enjoyed what we have inherited from those before us!
I hope others read my story and think – if Engineering is for Molly, it is also for me. The biggest barriers we face are often those within ourselves. The little voice that says ‘I can’t.’ Don’t listen. Engineering is here for everyone, and the world has an increasingly complex set of problems, from climate change resilience in transport systems, to making more food with less water. There is something for everyone in engineering who likes to tinker, so give it a go. You’ll only ever regret not doing it.
