The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 1883. DRUNK ON THE RAILWAY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1114, 5 June 1883, Page 2

The Temuka Leader TUESDAY, JUNE 5, 1883. DRUNK ON THE RAILWAY.

Strange things occur every day. A respectably dressed young man named Edward Plank applied for a first-class ticket at Temuka to travel by express train to Timaru last Saturday, but our local Stationraaster took it into his w.se head that he was not fit to travel firstclass, and so compelled him to fake a second-class one and go into a second class carriage. Perhaps thera is a regulation under which the Stationmaster is compelled fo do these things. Nothing is too absurd for the railway officials to do. But it looks very stiange if a passenger who is unfit to travel first class is to be rushed into a second -clams carriage. The tlii • g L mi ustrous. Either the man was fit to travel or he was not. If he was, he ought to have been allowed to travel in the class he wished, or, it not, be ought to have been given in charge of Ihe constable who was present. Why

should second-class..passengers hie annoyed by the presence of: drunken men any/ more than first-class passengers ? Plank + 6f/course expressed himself in very > He told “'the-—-swine he was riot fit to be a Stationmaster.” For this he was brought up before our intellectual R.M. in Timaru, yesterday, and fined 20s for having been drunk and disorderly in a railway carriage, and 20s for using abusive language to the Stationmaster. It is not very long since the same very impartial and conscientious R.M. fined a man who was not drunk and did not use any bad language at all £5 for interfering with a Stationmaster. The usual fine is, as in the case of Plank, 20s, but of course Mr Beswick can do what he likes, and be does it.