IT is not every day you get a phone call from a millionaire who asks you to board his private train.
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But not everyone is Orange aviation legend Max Hazelton.
The humble former pilot laughed, seemingly embarrassed, after he was told the old diesel train that pulled up at Orange Railway Station on Saturday, did so in his honour.
Businessman and former pilot Boyd Munro brought the train to Orange to meet Mr Hazelton and take him “as close as railways will go to his old stomping ground”.
“It’s an old train of a kind you would have seen running around Australia 50 years ago,” Mr Munro said.
“We’ll go to Mount Canobolas and out to Molong and back again.”
Mr Munro was asked why he chose to honour Mr Hazelton in that way.
“It’s self explanatory,” he said.
“Max has a very inspirational place in developing many facets of aviation in Australia and indeed Orange.”
Mr Hazelton founded Hazelton Airlines, a regional Australian airline which became Regional Express Airlines after a merger in August 2002.
Mr Hazelton said Mr Munro contacted him after he heard Mr Hazelton had been back to the Blue Mountains to find the site where Mr Hazelton had crashed his Auster plane 60 years ago.
While waiting for the train Mr Hazelton and businessman Dick Smith debated, again, the location of the crash site, and when the next trip to find it would be.
