Missing Tech student casts spotlight on dangers of 'train surfing'

Some consider train surfing an extreme sport. Others think it’s extreme folly.

Jimmy Hubert, says the Georgia Tech senior's family, was doing just that when he vanished Oct. 16. He was on a freight train when he fell, they say. His friends found Hubert more than two days later, battered and unconscious, in a ditch beside CSX train lines east of downtown Atlanta. He was seven miles from the site where he was last seen.

Train surfing is practiced all over the world, from deserts to mountains. Some ride atop trains for practical reasons: they need to get from one spot to another. But others just do it for the thrill.