Drunk passenger 'breaks into driver's cab and demands high-speed train slow down'

30-year-old man told driver they were travelling ‘much too fast’

An Intercity-Express high-speed train (Sebastian Terfloth/Wikimedia Commons)

A drunk man smashed his way into the driver’s cab of a high-speed train with a fire extinguisher and demanded that the driver slow down, German police have revealed.

The Intercity-Express (ICE) train operated by Deutsche Bahn (DB) stopped near Frankfurt after the incident on Sunday morning, according to federal police.

Passengers said the man grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall, smashed a glass door separating the cab from the compartment, and told the shocked driver the train was going much too fast.

He also claimed he had to save his fellow passengers, police said.

The 30-year-old man, who wasn’t named, was arrested and faces an investigation into dangerous interference in rail traffic, among other things.

No passengers were hurt but the train, which was supposed to be running from Frankfurt to Paris, was taken out of service.

In January a drunk ICE driver was escorted off a train by police after a scheduled stop was missed.

The driver of the high speed train travelling from Hamburg to Leipzig was breathalysed by officers and was found to have consumed a “staggering” amount of alcohol, according to The Local.

Additional reporting by AP