Features
The Eavis Express
Having won a range of awards from honorary doctorates to various festival prizes, Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis has now had a train named after him.
At the UK Festival Awards
The First Great Western locomotive, which will have a brass plaque bearing his name attached to the bodywork, will pull the 9:45 a.m. from Paddington Station, on the London to Swansea run.
During the festival June 24-28, when many music fans may be taking the train on their way to the west country, Eavis’ voice will be heard over the tannoy making the station announcements.
The naming came after the railway company asked Eavis if he would he record the station announcements that will be made when the trains leave for Castle Cary on the weekend of the festival.
“I asked them if there was any chance I could have a train named after me,” he told the Western Mail. “They said that I had to be dead for that to happen, but they’d see what the bosses said.”
The Duke of Edinburgh is the only other living person who has a First Great Western train named after them.
“It’s the first time I’ve been on the straight and narrow,” Eavis told the paper.