Train surfing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2007) |
Train surfing is an extreme sport which involves riders climbing or "surfing" on the outside of a moving train.
[edit] History
The practice is a serious issue in South Africa, where young people also have been killed or injured in accidents. With the creation of the internet the practice of filming the act and posting online videos of it is on the increase worldwide. While there are no official numbers, the London Underground is now running an advertising campaign against "tube surfing". The advertisements now at most underground stations show a female figure with one arm and the caption "she was lucky" next to it.
In Germany the sport was made popular on TV in the 1990s. There it was called "S-Bahn Surfing". Slowly the former trainsurfing culture changed and got integrated in the German graffiti culture. The phenomenon was forgotten until the millennium, but in 2005 it was rediscovered by a group from Frankfurt, Germany. The leader of the crew who calls himself "the trainrider" famously surfed the InterCityExpress, the fastest train in Germany. An internet video claimed that he died a year later from an incurable form of leukemia, but later "the trainrider" exposed in an interview of Sat1 Akte 08 this video was made by a fan and the story was a hoax.
An English teenager was killed by hitting a bridge while train surfing in November 2002.[1] A similar fate hit the Danish train surfer Martin Harris on 12 May 2007. After the incident, a campaign against train surfing was launched by two individuals. The homepage (in Danish) can be found at www.trainsurfing.dk.
[edit] References
- ^ Teenager died 'train surfing', BBC News, 8 May 2003
[edit] External links
- Extensive Video Collection of Trainsurfing Activity Documentation of the worldwide Phenomenon Trainsurfing
- South Africa's train-surfing problem BBC News
- Australian news report on a trainsurfing injury
- Trains surfing teen loses legs BBC News
- Train Surfing: Assessment of Risk Jinx Magazine
- Station 2: Trainsurfing article TV2 (résumé and screenshots from tv-doc, Danish language)
- Station 2: Train-surfing documentary TV2 (video-on-demand, requires sign-up and payment) (Mirror, login-free leak at YouTube)
- Trainsurfer Surfs Germany's Bullet Train on YouTube
- Trainrider DVD Trailer on Google Video
- A May '05 post to a German online forum documenting the trainsurfing of the InterCityExpress train from Hanau.
- A May '05 post to a German online forum documenting the trainsurfing of the InterCityExpress train from Hanau. (Google Translated from German to English)
- A weblog post claiming that the Trainrider may have faked his death. The post contains an anonymous comment claiming to be from a friend of the Trainrider, who says he is very much alive. The Trainrider later performed in a tv-report below, and thus it is official that he isn't dead.
- German TV-report featuring an interview of Trainrider alive (subtitled version in English)
- Danish news article about the first official train surfing accident in Denmark
- Trainsurfing.dk campaign launched against train surfing after Denmark's first deadly accident
- The Trainrider The complete account of The Trainrider, Danish language
