Toot-Toot

AUSTRALIA

Never before, said Conductor David Moore, had he traveled so fast. Moore's train, the Transcontinental Express, which crosses Australia's desert thrice weekly, was not supposed to exceed 40 m.p.h., but as it roared through the scheduled stop at Deakin one day last month, Moore clocked its speed at a breakneck 72 m.p.h. Passengers caught in the aisles of the six-car train were thrown to the floor as it rocked and swayed. Those who kept their seats had to dodge an avalanche of baggage falling from the racks above their heads.

Conductor Moore could not reach the engine. He later testified that he had peered forward from an inspection hatch on the top of the caboose (Australian passenger trains often carry cabooses), to see what was wrong. What he saw was not calculated to reassure him. A blonde female head was leaning out of the engineer's window on one side of the hurtling locomotive ahead. On the other side, another blonde female head protruded. Soon afterward the train pulled to a screaming stop in the middle of the desert. Wobbling perceptibly, Engine-driver Fred Leahy dismounted, wove away to the front of his locomotive and lay down on the tracks, his neck on one gleaming rail, his ankles on the other. Fireman George Swetman lightened the pause by trying to play a tune on the engine whistle.

Engineer Leahy last week followed Conductor Moore to the stand in a Port Pirie police court and explained his rocketing ride. He had failed to stop at Deakin, he said, for the simple reason that he had fallen asleep at the controls and the fireman had failed to wake him. The business of lying on the tracks was merely a routine inspection of the locomotive's underpinnings. As for the blondes, they were the fireman's guests, not his. "Girls," snarled Engineer Leahy, sounding now as though he meant it, "don't interest me."

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