ROY’S TRAIN MANIA.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 August 1923, Page 2

ROY’S TRAIN MANIA.

LONDON, June 23. A remarkable tale of a boy’s mania for train travel was told by a police superintendent at Selby (Yorkshire) yesterday, when .Toe Sylvester, 14, was charged with travelling without a ticket from London to Selby. According to the boy, whose home is at Plymouth, hi- mania for railway travel brought bun to the industrial school at Exminster, Devon, at the age of ten. Thence be escaped on Friday, and lie bad since journeyed practically all over England without any ticket front Plymouth to London, London to Worthing, then to the Midlands, and finally taking a train tit King's Cross for York, where, be said, an aunt lives. Relating bow be dodged the ticketcollectors, lie said that when a train stopped at a station where tickets were collected he leant from the carriage window till the collector approached. Then he got out, und when the collector had passed he managed to slip in again. Sylvester confided to the superintendent that he could not resist stealing a ride on the railway whenever an opportunity came to him—he really could not resist it. The superintendent said the Plymouth police informed him that Sylvester had absconded from Exminster Industrial School, and the adventurer was remanded to the workhouse to await an escort from the school.