80 MILES AN HOUR

Hokitika Guardian, 22 February 1933, Page 7

80 MILES AN HOUR

“FLYING SCOTSMAN” DRIVER. “It’s a glorious adventure,” says Mr William Barnes. He is over GO: years or age. He has been over 40 years on the railway, most of that time on the footplate of a locomotive, and for two years lias driven the famous “Flying Scotsman, ’ and when he retired on December 31 lie looked back on Ids life as “just a glorious adventure.”

. “Tiio 'sc-roodi of the whistle as we pass beneath a tunnel or fly through a deserted station, with the lights twinkling, is music in my ears,” Mr Barnes said »n the day or his retirement. All this summer and. last 1 shared the lever of the non-stop express from King’s Cross to Edinburgh, a distance of 393 miles, which we covered m 71 hours.

“And bless your life the road between London and Edinburgh became as familiar to me as walking down the street to my home. Speed has always been my hobby. But it doesn’t matter how fast you go it is not fast enough for some disgruntled passengers. “It was on one of the trips from London to Leeds that we arrived 15 minutes late. An irritable old gentleman came up to me and remarked: 'You ought to be had up for loitering,’ and yet we had been travelling at 80 miles an hour in places.”