LADS GRUELLING TRIP “JUST FOR FUN”

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 13138, 12 September 1940, Page 2

LADS GRUELLING TRIP “JUST FOR FUN”

London, Aug. 26

Two Glasgow boys, seeking something more exciting than air raids, undertook a gruelling, but adventurous, trip to London, “just for fun.” They travelled from Glasgow clinging to a precarious hiding-place between the wheels of the night express, i The journey lasted 10 hours, and, all that time the boys’ heads were resting on a box containing the carriage’s electrical gears. Their bodies were balanced on two sharp-edged steel rails, a foot apart, which were not long enough to allow their legs to be full and stretched. Their cramped-position was all the more uncomfortable because the grime-covered box was too high to enable them properly to rest their heads, and they were forced to support them partly on the neck and party on the hands. Maintenance men tapped the wheels at three stops, but did not notice the boys >r -who, although the train stopped" four times, never left their dangerous perches. They slept fitfully beneath a comfortable sleep-ing-car. Platelayers in London saw the boys come from beneath the train and shouted. The boys ran off, but the elder tripped on a live rail and became unconscious, .

He is in hospital and on the danger list, but the doctors think his toughness will save him.