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Caption:

Workers in the drawing office at the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway's Horwich works, May 1917. The drawing office produced designs for locomotives and railway equipment. Master copies of engineering drawings were stored in rows of plan chests, where they are being consulted by a young boy clerk and his female colleague. Many of the workers in the office are women. During the First World War women were employed in place of railwaymen who had joined the armed forces.