Engineers, a Job Title Separated by a Common Language!

By Rob Ellis | 27th October, 2016 No matter how much we may appreciate having a smartphone, tablet, high-speed broadband and easy access to a skinny latte with extra foam, we don’t know anybody that doesn’t break into a great, big smile when the whistle of a steam train blows. It may be nostalgia, an appreciation of how far we’ve come or simply a nation’s attachment to the Reverend W. Awdry stories, but we all love steam trains. The steam railways are inextricably linked to the Industrial Revolution; a period that is responsible for building the modern world as we know it. It was doing some reading about the early railways that yielded a quirk of the language – what it means to be an Engineer. In Britain, we understand engineers to be problem solvers, taking principles of science and using them to create machinery or methods of working that achieve tasks either more simply or faster. We even speak of software and chemical engineers, highly creative roles that have very little to do with traditional notions of an engine. The men who designed and built the first steam trains were the engineers, and today the people who drive them are simply known as ‘Train Drivers’. In the USA, however, they would never refer to a train as having a driver, they’re ‘Engineers’.

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