This working paper looks at some aspects of the way one railway occupation – that of locomotive driver – has been perceived in Great Britain from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth. This occupation is one of the most significant within the railway industry in terms of the identity it projects to the wider community, and the meanings which are in turn read into it. The evidence used in the study of which this paper is a small part reflects a process of forming, assigning and negotiating cultural significances around the figure of the locomotive driver across a range of discourses.