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He had wandered onto the Brooklyn subway tracks near Hoyt Street Station on Thursday morning, a boy of about 12, unattended and willing to test fate.

He managed to amble over the rail that carries 600 volts of electricity and wedge himself between the columns that separate the local and express tracks.

It was about 9:15 a.m., and a northbound train was barreling his way.

The response was swift. A customer hurried to a call box and pushed a button for help. The station agent who got the call notified the rail control center. All train operators in the area received an alert and were told to be on the lookout.

By then Hopeton Kiffin, a 51-year-old operator for the No. 5 train, had already spotted a flash of red on the tracks ahead of him in an area his express train would normally rush through. He slowed the train down. Someone on the platform pointed. There stood a boy in a red shirt, staring straight ahead, clapping his hands.

“I’ve seen strange things, adults walking on the tracks — once I saw a guy who was on there walking to the next station — but this one, with the child standing there, I was taken aback,” Mr. Kiffin said in an interview.

Mr. Kiffin’s reaction was swift but gentle. He secured the train, jumped out and approached the boy, who did not speak or respond physically or verbally to words.

“He was very serious — there was no emotion, no verbal communication, not a lot of eye contact,” Mr. Kiffin said.

So the father of three stopped talking and offered his hand.

“I have an 8-year-old daughter and sometimes words — they don’t listen — so I just gently held him by the hand,” he said. “I thought, ‘Let me guide him, and let him feel secure.’”

For a moment, the frequent subway story line of shared communal woe took a turn. Complaints about delayed trains, jam-packed platforms and violent crime were briefly overshadowed by Mr. Kiffin’s compassion.

About 15 minutes passed. Some people watched from the platform. Mr. Kiffin asked them how the boy had gotten into such an unusual place. No one knew.

Eventually Mr. Kiffin got the boy to walk to the waiting train and coaxed him into the operator’s cab.

The train then moved to the next stop, Borough Hall, where the police were waiting. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital to be evaluated.

Mr. Kiffin was praised for his efforts.

“I’m very proud of our train operator and station agent for their quick action to bring this child to safety without incident so that he can be reunited with his family,” the president of New York City Transit, Andy Byford, said in a statement.

Tony Utano, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, said Mr. Kiffin had helped to avoid a terrible tragedy.

“You can never relax when you are operating a subway train,” Mr. Utano said in a statement. “You have to be alert for anything out of place. This story has a happy ending only because this operator spotted this child and managed to get him to safety.”

Mr. Kiffin lives in East Flatbush and has been a train operator for 13 years. When reflecting on the day’s events, he was relieved that his instincts as a train operator and a parent had quickly fused. Things could have gone very differently, he believed, had the boy become frightened or upset or fallen on the electric rail.

“I feel I did my job,” Mr. Kiffin said.

Follow Corina Knoll on Twitter: @corinaknoll

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