page_title: Train surfing
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Train surfing / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Horse-powered train on the en:Swansea and Mumbles Railway, Wales Русский: Конный поезд на Железной дороге Суонси и Мамблеса Nederlands: Een paardgetrokken trein op de Swansea &amp; Mumbles spoorlijn, Wales
context_page_description: Train surfing is the act of riding on the outside of a moving train, tram or another rail transport. In a number of countries, the term train hopping is used synonymously with freight hopping, which means riding on the outside of a freight train, while train surfing can be practiced on any type of train. This type of travelling can be dangerous and even life-threatening, because there is a risk of death or serious injury from falling off a moving train, electrocution from power supply, colliding with a railway infrastructure while riding outside off structure gauge on the side or on the roof of a train, or unsuccessful attempts to jump on a moving train or off it. Today, the practice is forbidden by statutes on many railroads in the world. Despite this, it is still practiced, especially on those railroads where the trains are overcrowded.
context_section_description: The phenomenon of riding on the outside of trains came with the appearance of the first railway lines. On a series of first railroads, riding on rooftops and footboards of trains was common, but over time, starting from the second half of the 19th century, with an increase in the sizes and speed of trains, passenger coaches began to be produced fully covered and insulated from streets with a placement of all passenger seats inside carriages in order to improve the safety of passengers and prevent people falling from a moving train. However, some individuals continued riding on the outside of trains to travel without having a ticket.
  In the United States, this became a common means of transportation following the American Civil War as the railroads began pushing westward, especially among migrant workers who became known as "hobos". It continued to be widely used by those unable to afford other transportation, especially during times of widespread economic dislocation such as the Great Depression.
  In the first half of the 20th century during the era of trams rising in Europe and USA, trams in some cities became overcrowded, so some passengers began a practice of riding on footboards, doors, couplers and sometimes on the roofs of trams. Also, train surfing often occurred in European countries during the war conflicts, especially during the First World War, Russian Civil War and World War II. Soldiers and refugees often traveled on the roofs of carriages due to lack of seats inside.
  In the mid-20th century, European and American railroad companies in many countries took measures to reduce overcrowding in cars and prevent riding outside of them, so the prevalence of train surfing in those countries decreased. However, in some countries of Southeast Asia and Africa with a high population density, the problem of overcrowding of different vehicles, including trains, grew rapidly, so train surfing in those countries became a widespread phenomenon.
  As an extreme hobby, train surfing firstly appeared in South Africa during the 1980s among teenagers from poor families, and then began to appear in other countries around the world. A story from 1988 reports how teenagers as young as 13 had taken up surfing atop train cars in Brazil. During the 1990s, train surfing on a commuter electric multiple unit train became popular in Europe among young people who live near railway lines.
  In Germany, the practice of S-Bahn surfing was made popular during the 1990s. The phenomenon was forgotten until the millennium, but in 2005 it was rediscovered by a group of train surfers from Frankfurt, Germany. The leader of the crew who calls himself "the Trainrider" 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 revealed in an interview that this video was made by a fan and the story of his death was a hoax. 
  In the Soviet Union during the 1980s, teens and youths sometimes surfed trams. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the practice of surfing on electric multiple unit trains appeared during the 1990s in Russia and some other post-Soviet countries due to economic crisis and growing of interest for extreme recreational activities among teens and youths, who live near the railroads. At the beginning of 21st century, they also began to surf subway trains in Moscow Metro and organized train surfing crews and web-communities. In the mid-2000s, a problem of frequent cancellation of commuter trains and crowding inside rail cars appeared in the Moscow region. In summer 2010, dozens of commuter trains were cancelled due to track repairs on the Moscow railway, so the crowding of trains and number of train surfers in Moscow region has risen dramatically. It was the first time when a train surfing became a wide phenomenon in modern Russian Railways and it caused a big scandal. Train surfing was mostly a teenager hobby before this. After the railroad reconstruction the situation became stable and the cases of roof riding among the ordin
caption: An early horse-hauled rail car with passengers on its roof and foot boards
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