This is the dramatic moment firefighters free a man trapped by the neck in the narrow gap between a train and the platform.

Bystanders tried to free the casualty themselves before alerting railway workers who called in fire crews with specialist equipment after police had a go at getting him free, reports the Daily Mail.

Rescuers put a large wooden block in the gap when they reached the scene before using a machine to expand it even more.

They got other commuters to push the train carriage away from the platform at the same time in the heart-stopping 10-minute rescue while another firefighter went below the tracks to prepare to catch the injured man when he was finally released.

The near-tragedy happened at a train station called Libertad in the city of Merlo in the province of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

The man at the centre of the drama was identified as a 20-year-old street seller called Jose Alejandro Centurion.

Local reports said he tripped and fell as he left the train after arguing with another passenger.

Police said afterwards he had been drinking.

Dramatic footage taken by a commuter on his mobile phone showed a fire chief coordinating the rescue shouting to a colleague: 

‘Tell the passengers to push the carriage this way’ before the firefighter repeated the instructions by yelling out at the top of his voice: ‘Come on everyone, push this way.’ 

Another rescuer held him gingerly by the neck to save him from more serious injury as the gap was widened enough for Jose Alejandro to fall through the space below the tracks and into the arms of another firefighter below him.

Fire chief German Freire said: ‘We’re not sure at the moment how he fell but bystanders were saying that he had been fighting with another lad.

‘He was a bit beaten up but he seemed to be okay. He was conscious when we took him away and he could move everything.’ 

Last week a 37-year-old man died after stumbling and getting caught between a train and the platform at a station in Sydney, Australia.