A seven-year-old boy has been reunited with his parents after he hopped on a train leaving them standing on the platform when the automatic doors closed.

The boy, named only as Maksim, had been waiting with his family for an express train for the 80-kilometre (50-mile) journey from Munich to Ingolstadt in Germany on 17th September.

But moments after he jumped on board, the doors closed behind him and the train pulled away.

His frantic parents contacted the police who sent a squad car to intercept the train at the next stop.

In a statement obtained by Newsflash, Federal Police spokesman Wolfgang Hauner said: “After the RB16 train had departed, his parents went to the police station at platform 26 to describe what had happened.

“A police car was sent to Dachau, which is the train’s next regular stop.

“The officers welcomed the distraught seven-year-old and drove him back to the Hauptbahnhof (Munich Station) where he was reunited with his beaming parents.”

The police said passengers and train staff had looked after the boy during the 11-minute journey from Munich to Dachau, north of the city.

His parents were not named by the German authorities because of the country’s strict privacy restrictions.

Maksim’s adventure comes just weeks after a Ukrainian couple’s one-year-old daughter started their journey from Munich to the Czech capital Prague on her own.

Olha’s horrified parents were left stranded on the platform at Munich Station after they briefly got off before departure to make some phone calls on 4th July.

Officers took care of the child at a stop in the nearby town of Freising.

The toddler was then driven back to Munich where her overwhelmed parents had been waiting.