Thousands of people hoping for asylum in western Europe have trekked to Vienna from Austria's main border crossing point with Hungary after rail traffic was suspended due to overcrowding.
Austrian Federal Railways said it no longer has the capacity to deal with the thousands of people at the Nickelsdorf crossing wanting to board trains to the Austrian capital.
Once in Vienna, most have travelled on to Germany and other western EU nations.
Rail services between Vienna and the Hungarian capital Budapest were suspended on Thursday,
With no trains running, thousands of people set out on the major road linking the Nickelsdorf border crossing with Vienna, 40 miles away.
Austrian police spokesman Helmut Marban said there was "some kind of group dynamic" at Nickelsdorf that started with a few people beginning to walk toward Vienna and quickly developed into a large movement of people who pushed through police lines.
He said the A4 expressway had been closed to vehicles because of the dangers posed by the long line of people walking.
They started the trek despite buses and taxis being called to Nickelsdorf to ferry migrants to the Austrian capital, the main jump-off point for Germany and other western EU nations for the tens of thousands who have crossed from Hungary.
Police said 7,500 people crossed into Austria at Nickelsdorf on Thursday.
Meanwhile, thousands more refugees endured torrential rain as they crossed from Greece into Macedonia.
About 7,000 people made their way past police in camouflage jackets as they contended with poor weather and muddy conditions.
The sudden onset of autumn took tens of thousands by surprise along the Balkans route from Greece to Hungary, the main gateway to western Europe for more than 160,000 asylum seekers from Syria and elsewhere already this year.
As recently as last week, those making the epic journey, much of it on foot, were baking in a region-wide heatwave and free to sleep under the stars.
Now they are without shelter and struggling to keep camp fires burning, highlighting the inadequate support provided by several European governments at each border crossing.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article