A Sydney Institution.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXI, Issue 6695, 22 September 1896, Page 3

A Sydney Institution.

One of the institutions of Sydney (says the Bulletin) is the " Drunks' Train " the midnight train for Parramatta on Saturday night. The Satnrdaynight drunks who live in the railway suburbs take a zig-zag course for this train, and are helped in by their friends, or the railway officials, or by other drunks. Then the porters bang the doors caretully, for at nearly every door some excited person has his head in the way, and the heaving mass of beer song and blasphemy rolls away into the darkness, with its feet in its hat, its collar burst, and the ash from its pipe getting into its eye. Most of the inmates are regular passengers, and when the sleeping drunks reach their respective stations tbey are generally identified unless they should happen to be unrecognisable through mud, and dragged out by the guard or by the hand of Providence. The strange or unknown drunk goes right on to Parramatta, and is thrown one there because the train goes no further, and hangs over the rail till morning trying to identify himself. Parramatta is a more interesting place at 2 a.m. on Sunday than at any other time, owing to the inebriated strangers from down the line fore-gathering outside the railway station and lighting matches to try and find out their own names and ad dresses and endeavoring to undress under a tree. A few hours later, about daybreak, a saddened procession discovers its whereabouts by reading a board at the railway station, and starts for home in various ways more or less circuitous and wobblesome, and those who are left behind ascertain their names by finding them on the charge sheet on Monday morning.