PROOF
THE BACKSTORY
FROM TINY TRACKSIDE HOUSES, UKRAINIAN SIGNAL OFFICERS
KEEP TRAINS RUNNING SMOOTHLY AND MOTORISTS SAFE.Ukraine’s colorful crossing houses provide a public service and are a cultural touchstone.MANY OF SASHA MASLOV’S best
childhood memories are connected
to trains. Every vacation, every trip to
another city, he’d stare out the window
to see the texture of his country in the
apartment buildings and shops and
cars waiting for the train to pass. And
every so often, he’d see a tiny house
with a woman standing by it, holding
a yellow flag.
“Ukrainian railroad ladies,” as
Maslov calls them in his portrait series,
are a cultural tradition that feels as old
as rail travel in Ukraine. The workers
are tasked with sending flag-based
signals to conductors of approaching
trains. A folded yellow flag means all
clear ahead. An unfolded flag means
reduce speed and proceed with cau-
tion. A red flag—or a flare shot into the
air—means to stop moving entirely, as
a hazard is ahead.
Some aspects of rail officer life arechanging. The officers are no longer
all women, and the Ukraine Railways
agency, Ukrzaliznytsia, has expanded
its hiring to try to bring more young
workers into the unglamorous but
stable work.
In a world of high-speed trains and
automated crossings, rail attendants
today may spend less time signaling
to trains than policing and warning
motorists. “Ukrainians are notori-
ously not law-abiding,” Maslov com-
ments. “If there is no watcher, people
will go around the barriers to beat a
moving train.”
The life can be monastic. In between
trains, the workers tend gardens, com-
plete chores, and fill out paperwork. In
one house, Maslov saw a notebook in
which an attendant had taken down
the license plate numbers of cars that
ran through barriers. She sent the list
to the police. —DANIEL STONE