The CCTV footage shows a baby’s pram rolling off a train platform as the mother makes a desperate lunge to save her son, but she is too late and it tumbles on to the rails in front of an incoming train.
This heart-stopping scene happened on Friday at Ashburton station in Melbourne, Australia. But the story has a happy ending: the six-month-old baby survived with just a cut on his forehead, although the pram was dragged about 35m by the braking train.
Paramedic Jon Wright said the boy just “needed a feed and a nap”.
“Luckily, he was strapped into his pram at the time, which probably saved his life. I think the child’s extremely lucky,” Wright told the Herald Sun newspaper after the baby was taken to hospital with only minor injuries.
The footage shows the mother taking her hands off the three-wheeler pram, which begins to roll towards the platform edge. In an episode eerily reminiscent of Eisenstein’s famous scene from Battleship Potemkin the pram eludes her outstretched arms and tips front-first on to the tracks as other horrified passengers rush to her side.
The driver slammed on the brakes as soon as he saw the pram tumble in front of him and fortunately the train was already slowing down to stop at the station.
Rail firm Connex is to investigate how the pram rolled off the platform and the train driver will be offered counselling. The accident came one day after Connex launched a child safety awareness campaign warning parents to keep infants strapped into their prams at all times while on platforms.
The incident coincided with the “balloon boy” story in the US, where a media frenzy ensued after it was feared a six-year-old Coloradeo boy was trapped in a flyaway balloon. He was later found hiding in the family’s garage attic.
The blogosphere is awash with speculation that it had all been a publicity stunt by the parents. No such suspicion surrounds the baby on the train platform. – guardian.co.uk