GEORGE CUNNINGHAM

    THE late Superintendent of the Western District of the North British Railway was born in 1842 at Lynnwood Mill on the Slitrig Water, near Hawick. In 1857 he entered the railway service as a clerk at Jedburgh Station. Thence he went to Dalkeith and Kelso, before being transferred to the office of the General Superintendent at Waverley Station in 1862. When Sir David Hunter received his appointment in Natal in 1879, Mr. Cunningham became chief assistant to the late Mr. Maclaren. Five years later, on the death of Mr. John Hay, he was appointed to the Western District, which he held for twenty-four years. During that period he saw the opening of the Glasgow City and District Railway in March, 1886, of the West Highland Railway to Fort-William in 1894, and of the extension to Mallaig in 1901. Upon his retiral, by the age limit, in November, 1907, he was presented, at a large representative gathering, presided over by Lord Provost Sir William Bilsland, with a silver casket and a cheque in appreciation of his fifty years of railway service.

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