We are very lucky in that there is a local model railroading club with a huge train layout that allows kids (big and small) to come watch their trains rolling about. We can run over there any Saturday and the kids can watch the trains climb mountains or roll through town. When they get older, if they're really interested, they can even join the club and learn to run the trains themselves.

Kids in Lodz, Poland are not so fortunate it seems. Lacking access to an impressive model railroad system, fourteen-year-old Adam Dabrowski turned the local public transit system into his own personal playset. Adam used a TV-style remote to control the system's rolling stock, switching them onto the wrong tracks and causing four trams to derail.

"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 police spokesman. "He had converted the TV control into a device capable of controlling all the junctions on the line and wrote in the pages of a school exercise book the best junctions to move trams around and what signals to change."

While it all sounds like fun and games, a dozen people were injured in one incident alone. "He treated it like any other schoolboy might a giant train set -- but it was lucky nobody was killed," said Micor. The boy will be charged with endangering public safety in juvenile court.