A man in Austria has jumped onto a high-speed train after apparently being left behind at a station stop. According to local media reports, the man, an Algerian aged 24, is reported to have decided to take advantage of a scheduled stop in St. Poelten, 64km (60 miles) west of the capital Vienna, for a cigarette break.
It was too late by the time he realized the train had started pulling out of the station, but he took the decision to climb onto the space between two carriages, anyway. He started banging on the windows to alert fellow passengers before an emergency stop was performed to allow him on board. He had a heated argument with the train conductor, Austrian tabloid Heute reported.
The service from Zurich, Switzerland, to Vienna arrived with a seven-minute delay, a spokesman for Austrian rail (OBB) told AFP news agency. "It is irresponsible, this kind of thing usually ends up with someone dying," he said. The man has since been arrested.
A similar incident occurred in January in Germany when a passenger — this time a fare-dodger — clung to the outside of a German high-speed train. The man, a Hungarian national, told police he had left his luggage on the train during his cigarette break and did not want to be parted from it.
