Polish boy use tv remote to derail tram

January 12, 2008 – 11:55

The Register has a story about a 14-year old Polish boy who used a modified tv remote to derail the public tram rail system. Now there is genius in the making there, hope it gets channelled appropriately by the adults who has influence over the course his life takes.

“He studied the trams and the tracks for a long time and then built a device that looked like a TV remote control and used it to manoeuvre the trams and the tracks,” said Miroslaw Micor, a spokesman for Lodz police.

“He had converted the television control into a device capable of controlling all the junctions on the line and wrote in the pages of a school exercise book where the best junctions were to move trams around and what signals to change.

“He treated it like any other schoolboy might a giant train set, but it was lucky nobody was killed. Four trams were derailed, and others had to make emergency stops that left passengers hurt. He clearly did not think about the consequences of his actions,” Micor added.