Mexborough and Swinton Times July 8, 1927

A Passenger Driver
47 Years of Strenuous Service
Mexborough Man’s Retirement

Having completed 47 year’s service with the LNE railway company, Mr William Booth, of Argyle Street, Mexborough, retired on Saturday.

He started as an engine cleaner in 1880, at the age of 18, and eventually became a driver.

At the age of 35 he was driving regularly an express train. The whole of his service with the exception of a few years at Staveley and Oxford, was at Mexborough.

During his first 18 months of his stay at Oxford he drove an express which completed 274 miles in a day of 9 ½ hours. Had this mileage been paid for at present rates he would have had received a very high wage. During that particular 18 months he travel more miles than any other engine driver in the country.

Mr Booth has been continuously in the passenger train service for 30 years, and has been associated for the whole of that time with one engine, number 688, from its “maiden journey” to it’s farewell trip. This is a “record” for association with one engine, and it was facetiously suggested that on his retirement railway company ought to present him with “688.”

There has, in Mr Booth’s railway life, been no accident for which he was directly responsible. He has been involved in one accident causing loss of life, another case where a suicide was decapitated, and an accident at a level crossing near Frodingham, when he was a fireman. In the last case two farm labourers proceeding in a double horse wagon open crossing gates in the absence of the attendant and started to drive across the line after mounting the wagon. The engine of Mr Booth’s goods train struck the wagon broadside. The two labourers were projected violently into the air, the engine passed under one and he fortunately fell clear and both escaped with shock. The wagon was demolished and the two horses killed.

Mr Booth’s last journey was to take a special trip from Conisbrough to Cleethorpes, conveying 1,600 Sunday school children.

Mr Booth was born at Scholes, within a stone’s throw of Kepple’s Monument.

He was greeted with many handshakes and expressions of good wishes from comrades and officials on his retirement, and especially from fireman, among whom he has been extremely popular.

Asked if he was sorry to leave the footplate, he told our represented that he would welcome a period of peace and quiet after a strenuous 30 years of passenger train work.