Baby survives after train drags pram along tracks

A 15-month-old boy survived with only minor facial injuries after a pushchair carrying him rolled off a railway platform and into the path of an oncoming train.

Paramedics said the toddler was dragged 10 metres by the passenger train face down but emerged with only cuts and bruises.

The boy had been sitting in a double buggy with his three-year-old brother on the platform of Tooronga station in Melbourne, Australia, when the older child got out to stand on the platform. His grandmother, who was looking after the boys, turned away as the train pulled into the station and, as she turned back around, saw the pram on the tracks.

Investigators said the train driver was travelling slowly and applied the emergency brakes, but still dragged the pushchair between eight and 10 metres.

The boy was taken to the Royal Children's Hospital to be checked over. The grandmother was yesterday being treated for shock at the same hospital.

Kate Jessop, a paramedic who was called to the scene, said: "All she [the grandmother] can recall is she saw the pram on the platform and then next time she turned around she saw it on the tracks. So she's had an incredible fright and it's just the most miraculous circumstances that he is as uninjured as he is. I was assuming the worst when we received the call and had awful pictures in my head of a child underneath a train.

"This is obviously every paramedic's worst nightmare to go to a child that has been injured, let alone been hit by a train. On arrival the child was conscious and alert. It appears the pram has rolled on to the tracks and then been pushed forward by the train.

"The one-year-old has sustained some minor facial bruising and some grazes to the head, but appears to be otherwise uninjured."