The stories regarding Legalion are legendary and some of them have "grown legs" and taken on a life of their own, to the point where I believe the story and the truth have taken divergent paths. Some local acts of cruelty and criminality attributed to Legalion, I know categorically to be the work of others.nnThe lesser known "Dus" and not Legalion, for example, was the kid who lost his legs in the train accident, and had a pair of slippers sent to him in hospital anonymously with the greeting "Hope you're soon back on you feet" (rumoured to be from the Oakleigh cops). The involvement of the train led some ill-informed people to attribute it to Legalion. Legalion was riding a bike around, doing his trade mark "You're Bald !" scream at strangers, months after supposedly losing his legs. I know this as a fact because I remember seeing Dus and his dad BOTH in wheel chairs at the Murrumbeena shops. (His dad was fucked up from diabetes). It had a profound impact because I saw this former super tuff shit who previously had everyone in absolute fear of him - now a harmless trolley of junk hangin' with his Dad !!nnDus was the one who pelted a handful of rocks point blank into Mrs Hughes' face. Legalion was rarely cruel or overtly violent towards others, which makes me sceptical about the scissors in the head story, although its tag about defecating on the stairs sounds like his work.nnI therefore intend to only chronicle Legalion feats that were personally witnessed by either myself, or the immediate circle of reliable witnesses like Veli, Mark Symonds etc, or those stories related by Legalion himself. In regard to the latter, whilst Richard liked to impress, I never got the impression that he was bullshitting us. Like an evangelist he was constantly exhorting us to ride the trains with him. Those of us who did, invariably witnessed stunts far more risky and life threatening than those described by Richard as having taken place in our absence. You'll have to take his word for it.nnPart One: Early Train Pranks and "The Tea Party"nnLegalion was obsessed by trains and it never ceases to amaze me that people see train spotter types as benign, boring and safe types. I now think, after witnessing Legalion's antics and my "Puffing Billy" experiences, that these people are perhaps amongst the most volatile and psycho sexually disturbed on the planet. Legalion's train obsession included train sets at home with which he would organise Gomez Addams style train wrecks for his own amusement and vinyl LP recordings of train noises. One I recall, had the rather sinister title of Locos At Night and had a lino cut picture of this big black menacing steam train flying through the rain at night. There was a definite link between trains and Richard's Libido. Craig Guerin recalls the time he went round to play trains and got bored after a couple of hours and went into the lounge room to watch telly. Legalion kept playing alone and after some time emerged, with a bottle of cooking oil in one hand and his dick in the other and began beating off.nnBut these surrogate toys were no match for his real life obsession with real trains. Richard often skipped class to ride the trains, and would spend whole days just travelling "the Met". He had all the "Hex" and "Square" and "H" keys that gave him access to doors between carriages (Funny how I still recall the different types) and most importantly the roof. This allowed Richard to indulge his passion for train surfing. Now a common activity, train surfing was quite new to us in 1975. One odd part of it was that when the pantograph on the roof hit joins in the wires it would spark, and Richard would often come back into the carriage with black sooty looking shit on his hands and neck. I recall asking him if it hurt, which elicited the now oft used classic line about which you inquired, in response. "Nah, it sorta burns me but it doesn't hurt me"nnOne other prank that required assistance was the "Monkey Swing", where two accomplices would hold open the automatic doors with their feet. Richard would then stand in the doorway facing inwards, grab the top of the doorway and swing back and forth whilst emitting loud gibbon style shrieks. The trick with this one was timing the swing so that you swang OUT between the pylons and IN before you got too close to the next one. This led to the legendary event where Richard fell out at Holmesglen and cut his arse to ribbons (although Richard claimed that he deliberately let go to avoid hitting the pylon).nnNOTE: I think this event also contributed to the "no legs" rumour.nnBy far his most appealing prank to me was the Tea Party. At hard rubbish collection time he recruited a team of accomplices who scavenged nature strips for various articles at Richard's instruction. A small coffee table and a TV. An armchair, a lamp and a rug. And finally a cup and saucer. These were all carted to the Holmesglen bridge. (After stopping off at Gardiner's Creek to harpoon some fluro tubes into the rocks and watch them explode) I think Holmesglen was the preferred location because of the many possible escape routes. (I don't know if you remember that overgrown raised up area where kids went to ride trail bikes and smoke ciggies which is now under the South Eastern Freeway?).nnThe items were set up ON THE TRACKS to resemble a lounge room. Legalion was like some fussy interior designer, making sure we put all the stuff in an aesthetically pleasing position. When satisfied with the layout, Richard took his place in the arm chair, "watching" the TV and having a quiet cuppa. The whole scenario with the rug and the refinement of the saucer, was very pythonesque, although I imagine the terrified train driver had a different view as his train bore down on the "lounge room", its breaks squealing and sparks coming off the tracks. At the last second, as we all screamed "Now !" (In fact I began screaming "now!" when the thing was a bout 2 miles away) at Richard, he catapulted himself backwards up and out of the chair as the train smashed the TV and furniture to bits. The TV exploded. We then ran like hell outta there. This event made the Chadstone Progress and Progress Press (local papers) and I became shit scared of getting caught, or worse, having Mum and Dad find out, and scaled back my involvement with Legalion after this.nnThere was a definite sense that Legalion's prank path was a little more extreme than I was comfortable with and would lead to a stint in Turana (Youth detention centre).The Tea Party worried me because the cops came to school to ask a few questions and I was convinced some one was gonna squeal. I think Tyrell diverted them to Oakleigh Tech School. Another common one was to get the Glen Waverley express from Flinders St on Friday night. This gave Richard an uninterrupted journey of around 40 minutes to "surf and swing" or if he was in a more pensive mood, just "flash browns". On the way in at Flinders Street, Richard would have himself pushed out of the door on his skateboard and go careering along the platform knocking people over whilst again screaming "You're bald !" to everyone.nnRichard had some type of mentor, who in retrospect, given later revelations, may have been some type of boyfriend, who worked for V-Line as a driver on the country lines. This bloke was the source of all the keys and inside knowledge. This bloke lost his job because he let Richard dance naked up and down the top of one of those Y-class diesel locos. He was spotted at Diggers Rest, the train stopped and both were arrested. I think this was how he eventually wound up in Turana, but I'm not sure, because there was all that shit about grabbing girls tits (that resulted in his really poor "Identikit" likeness in the paper and that we thought he was never busted for) going on at around the same time. I recall going to a party at Louise Gough's, which was crashed by some tuff shits, one of whom had just got out of Turana. We thought we'd impress the guy and assembled chicks by saying we knew Legalion, thinking his "rep" probably carried a bit of weight. The tough shit gave us a real weird scowl, and said "Legalion ?? He's a fucking poof. He used to give head jobs for smokes in Turana !" then turned away in disgust. So much for impressin' the chicks !!nnTo be continued.