What led a 28-year-old man to straddle a railway line could not be explained at his inquest.

Luca Zordan was struck by a train at 3.25am on March 6 this year near the Godstow Road railway bridge at Wolvercote, Oxford.

An hour and a quarter before he died, he was dropped off by taxi close to his Banbury Road home.

He shared the cab with two colleagues who had worked the late shift with him at McDonald's in the city centre. But the inquest in Oxford heard yesterday that he did not return home.

Freight train driver Paul Trapp said he saw Mr Zordan "straddling the line as if riding a motorbike."

Mr Zordan made no attempt to get out the way.

The jury, which returned an open verdict, heard there was nothing to suggest Mr Zordan might have wanted to take his own life.