A friend and I used to do this years ago. We didn't ride for very long usually but we did it initially with the intent to access abandoned buildings/areas we couldn't normally access or would take too long to walk to or have security at the obvious entry points. These trains would go very close by a lot of these areas and it made super simple to just hop off and head to the building. Getting back from the places could be more difficult if we couldn't catch a train back but we always had plans.

Different countries in Europe have vastly different electrification systems. Most use either 25 000 V AC or 3 000 V DC, but then there's the 15 000 V AC used by German-speaking countries, Sweden, and Norway. And the French-Dutch 1500 V DC.

And France uses 25 000 V on all of its new lines as well.

Electricity can jump about 1 cm per 1 000 V, so Finnish 25 kV overhead wires can shock you at a distance of 25 cm, south-French 1.5 kV overhead wires need you to be under 1.5 cm away from the line.

Converting to inches and feet: 1.5 kV needs you to be closer than an inch to the overhead wire in order to get electrocuted, while 25 kV can jump almost a foot.

It happens regularly that young people die when they climb atop freight wagons and get too close to the sstructures holding the overhead line. They only know to avoid the line itself, but don't understand how.far electricity can jump nor that it's not only the wire that is "hot", but also all structures up to the isolator.

Please do not do that and annoy all the other passengers with hour long delays, canceled trains and so on.

Really just do not do it.

idk, people die regularely while train surfing. One slip and you not only die but know what it feels like to have your extremities cut off. Extremely dangerous and not even easy to do, because train yards are camera controlled and because of many incidents the awareness and security on cargo train yards is pretty high. Trains do stop some times to let other trains pass and they do stand for hours sometimes, but since europe is so densly populated, you will constantly pass through train yards and stations. You would have to hide for hours, tensed up to not fall and deal with the constant loud noise of the trains. I would honestly rather pay the extreme high prices for tickets than to be in discomfort and the risk of dying for hours. Even if paying for tickets is not punk and the whole system behind it is totally corrupt and fucked.

wth is that indentation level. i mean i like it but still