Tourist hangs on to Australian train for hours – records his adventure

by Scott Carmichael on


An American tourist spending some time in Australia just took the ride of his life. 19 year old Chad Vance was stretching his legs on the platform during a crew change stop, when his train started to leave the station – without him on board.

Instead of panicking (and spending the night waiting for the next train), he climbed on board the moving train and spent the next two and a half hours in a cramped stairwell.

Eventually, he was able to get the attention of an employee, who pulled the emergency brakes. At that point, Chad was turning blue from the sub-zero wind. Of course, since we live in a social media world, Chad did take the time to make a video of his adventure, which is posted in the clip above.

He’s lucky they found him on time – the train had another three and a half hours to go till it reached its destination. Of course, his adventure is nothing like the stuff people do as a hobby...

Train Surfing: Extreme Form of Travel? Or Utterly Stupid?

by Willy Volk on

Train surfing is a thrill-seeking activity that involves riders clinging to or “surfing” on the outside of a moving train. It’s dangerous and it’s illegal, and there are, of course, numerous potential accidents that can result from it. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty extreme form of traveling, so I thought it deserved a mention on Gadling.

This clip shows some train surfing by a German known only as The Trainrider. According to the person who uploaded the clip to YouTube, “Before he died from leukemia, he enjoyed the last year of his life by surfing on trains. Included Germany’s fastest Highspeed train ICE with a top speed of 330 km/h(!) No one did that before.”

Is The Trainrider for real? Insomnia seems to think the Trainrider is a guy named Alexander Richter who faked the death of his alter-ego — possibly to sell some videos. Kinda sleazy, if it’s true. If you’re interested, there’s another video after the jump.

If you’re chomping at the bit for more, iFilm has a 23-minute film of the Trainrider.