D'oh!

In ordinary circumstances, it kinda sucks to leave something behind on a train, but in this case, it really, really, really (like, times four hundred thousand) sucks to have left something behind:

A retired shipping consultant said he lost an expensive 17th-century violin after forgetting it on a train. Rob Napier said he did not realize the instrument, made by master Venetian craftsman Matteo Goffriller in 1698, was still on the train's luggage rack until it began pulling out of the station.

"I think you can imagine the awful, kind of pit-in-your-stomach feeling," Napier, 67, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday. "My first instinct was: Can I jump on top of the train? But that was obviously stupid."

Napier said he was on his way home to Bedwyn, some 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of London, on Jan. 29 after retrieving the violin from an expert who had valued it at about 200,000 pounds (US$390,000; euro245,000). Napier called the train company, but by the time the train reached its final destination, the instrument was gone.

Um, if I had just picked up a violin from an expert who had told me that it was worth four hundred thousand bucks, I don't think I could possibly leave it in a luggage rack. Probably because I'd be clutching it, white-knuckled, to my nerve-wracked body the entire way home. And even when I got it home, I might have trouble putting it down.