Surekha Yadav

Surekha Shankar Yadav née Surekha Ramchandra Bhosale is the senior-most female locopilot at the Indian Railways. She became India's first female train driver in 1988. She drove the first "Ladies Special" local train for Central Railways when it was first introduced in the four metro cities by Mamata Banerjee the then Railway Minister, in April 2000. She was suburban local train motor woman from 2000 to 2010. She then got promoted to Sr. Loco Pilot Mail in 2010. A momentous event in her career was on 8 March 2011, on the International Women's Day, when she became Asia's first woman train driver to drive the Deccan Queen from Pune to CST, through difficult but scenic topography, where she was greeted by the then Mayor of Mumbai Shraddha Jadhav, at CST, the headquarter of Central Railway zone. She repeated the feat ten years later driving an all-woman crew from Mumbai to Lucknow. A commonly heard comment in 2011 was that "Women don't drive railway engines'".