/ 1 August 2006

Fried pigeon sparks train chaos in Denmark

Denmark’s train network on Monday was thrown into chaos by a pigeon that alighted on a high-tension electricity wire, causing a short-circuit that brought services to a standstill throughout the country, the national rail company (DSB) said.

The unfortunate bird is believed to have been fried on overhead cables used to power trains, causing an outage on the main line linking Copenhagen with the rest of the country, a spokesman told national television station TV2.

Rail travellers faced severe disruption on Monday, and DSB said it did not expect traffic to return to normal before Tuesday. — AFP