Former railway employee, an international trader (8)
I believe the answer is:
exporter
'an international trader' is the definition.
'exporter' can be an answer for 'trader' (I've seen this before). I'm unsure of the 'an international' bit.
'former railway employee' is the wordplay.
'former' becomes 'ex' (prefix meaning former or onetime).
'railway employee' becomes 'porter' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'ex'+'porter'='EXPORTER'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for exporter that I've seen before include "trading abroad" , "One sending goods abroad" , "Overseas trader" , "One making foreign sales" , "one selling overseas" .)