A porter is a railroad employee assigned to assist passengers aboard a passenger train or to handle their baggage; it may be used particularly to refer to employees assigned to assisting passengers in the sleeping cars. In Australia, a Railway Porter had various roles. A Baggage Porter assisted with luggage; an Operating Porter assisted with Safeworking duties; a Station Porter assisted with general station duties and a Lad Porter was a junior Station Porter.
Railroad porters in the United States
Until desegregation had its effect in the United States in the 1960s, the occupation of porter was almost the exclusive province of African American men. This was primarily a result of the post-Civil War policy of George Pullman, head of the Pullman Company, who wished to tap into a huge potential work force that was also, not incidentally, non-unionized. This eventually changed with the organization of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters under the leadership of A. Phillip Randolph [1].
