History Main / ChainedToARailway

* In the episode of ''WesternAnimation/CourageTheCowardlyDog'' where the three headed son of the chicken from outer space attempted to avenge his father's death by destroying Courage, one of his attempts was this, however, Courage managed to save himself by using a track switch, [[InventionalWisdom which two of the heads wondered why they included in the plan]].

* One of the pictures in Daniel Cohen's ''Horror in the Movies'' is a woodcut from ''Scenes from the Nineteenth-Century Stage in Advertising Woodcuts'' which depicts a ''woman'' rushing out of a building to save a ''man'' who's tied to the tracks about three feet away from the oncoming train.

* Apparently SAS selection used to include a scenario where the 'captured' soldier was handcuffed to a railroad track blindfolded, whereupon the interrogators would pretend to panic, shouting "Where's the key?" then "Too late, run for it!" as a train was heard approaching (but was actually going past on a parallel line). Some calmly shifted their body so the train would cut their shackles, others panicked completely and ended up in a position where they would have lost their limbs.

* The infamous case of the "Boys On The Tracks". In the early morning hours of August 23, 1987, Arkansas teenagers Don Henry and Kevin Ives were run over by a freight train. The initial autopsy report claimed that the boys had passed out on the tracks after smoking a large amount of marijuana. However, a second autopsy indicated that not only had the boys very little pot, but that one of them may have already been dead when the train hit him. The case remains unsolved and no specific suspect has ever been named, but it is believed that while out hunting, the boys stumbled upon a drug deal, were killed to ensure their silence about what they had seen, then placed on the tracks to cover up evidence of the murder. Naturally, [[ConspiracyTheorist some people]] [[InsaneTrollLogic blamed the entire episode on the Governor of Arkansas]] at the time, UsefulNotes/BillClinton.

* ''Series/AsTheWorldTurns'': Played completely straight when Gwen's stalker and doppleganger ties her and Jade to the railroad tracks in order to MurderTheHypotenuse and romance Gwen's husband Will.

* Played straight in the old ''WesternAnimation/XMen'' cartoon with Jubilee [[BoundAndGagged tied up]] on the subway tracks. [[spoiler:It was only a mental image of Jubilee implanted in ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}'s mind so he'd get splatted trying to save her, though.]]

* In the ''Fanfic/ThisTimeRound'' story [[http://www.ttrarchive.com/mastertest1.html "Master Test,"]] the Jacobi Master, challenged to prove his evilness, decides to tie Mel to a railway. She complains that he's being unimaginative.

* In ''Comicbook/TheMuppetShowComicBook'' #2, there's a page called "From the Top-Secret Casebook of Scooter, Boy Detective", which ends with Scooter watching the hypnotist Creepy [=McBoo=] tying a chicken to the railway tracks and noting "Remain firmly unconvinced that [=McBoo=] is not an evil hypnotist."

* In the ''FanFic/ThisTimeRound'' story [[http://www.ttrarchive.com/mastertest1.html "Master Test,"]] the Jacobi Master, challenged to prove his evilness, decides to tie Mel to a railway. She complains that he's being unimaginative.
* ''FanFic/SaikoRocks'': A flashback shows [=SMG3=] doing this to Tari ForTheEvulz.

* Played in ''Videogame/FinalFantasyVIII'' with an optional GF the player can acquire. Literally flaming tracks appear after barriers appear on either side of the enemies and the background morphs into unintelligible [[SwirlyEnergyThingy space vortex-y swirly things]]. Then you see his light…um…light up and see him zooming down the tracks at a rate of knots, and seconds before contact is made it zooms in to give you a shot of his demon face before he slams through the enemies, and before long all returns to normal and the enemies receive damage and a huge number of additional status affects. You can [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4VjvBaMHJg see all of this here.]]

* Played straight on at least two instances in the ''WesternAnimation/MegaMan'' cartoon. Since he was a robot, he was electrified to the rail rather than tied.

* In the 1948 ''WesternAnimation/TomAndJerry'' short "Kitty Foiled", Tom tied Jerry to a toy railroad track. The mouse got saved by the canary, who bombed the toy railway with a ''bowling ball'', smashing straight through the floor and dispatching the onrushing train into the basement.

* [[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0797931/?ref_=ttmi_tt According to IMDB,]] this is one of several [[DeathTrap Death Traps]] in which the DastardlyWhiplash [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Villas Canbe]] puts the DesignatedVictim [[MeaningfulName Gladys Villing]] after she rejects his advances in the 1915 comedy ''The Strenuous Life''. The hero, [[AwesomeMcCoolName Manly Fellows,]] eventually gets tired of the constant rescuing and settles down with her mother instead, [[DatingCatwoman while Gladys marries Villas.]]

* Happened to ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' with a {{Homage}} to a [[SilentMovie silent movies]] in the episode "Slave the Day". [[spoiler:But [[{{Trainstopping}} a train is eventually stopped]] by [[DumbMuscle Big Billy]] of the Gangreen Gang wrongly saving them]].

* In ''ComicBook/SensationComics'' #26, ComicBook/WonderWoman is tied to the railway tracks with what she thinks is her magic lasso. It isn't as [[ItMakesSenseInContext her mother has stolen her lasso and replaced it with a copy]]. Once she realises it is a fake, she is able to break loose and [[{{Trainstopping}} stop the train by lifting the locomotive off the tracks]].

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* A cartoon in a magazine showed several early 1900s suffragettes driving along and spotting a friend of theirs, an elegant lady who cheerfully waves her parasol at them... as she stands over the DastardlyWhiplash type ''she'' tied to the tracks. The driver comments that this is one of their "more militant sisters."
* In the "Sweet Caroline" arc in ''ComicStrip/ModestyBlaise'', one of the attention getting murders committed by Sweet Caroline is to drug a famous actress and tie her to a railway track like a heroine from an old-time melodrama.

* The "Unofficial I Hate Computers Book" (with cartoons [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin about hating computers]]) features this trope too -- of course parodied, since it's not a damsel tied to the tracks but, duh, a computer.

* In the ''FanFic/ThisTimeRound'' story [[http://www.ttrarchive.com/mastertest1.html "Master Test,"]] the Jacobi Master, challenged to prove his evilness, decides to tie Mel to a railway. She complains that he's being unimaginative.

* While this may never have happened in the original ''Film/ThePerilsOfPauline'' serial, it ''did'' happen to Violet Standish -- also played by Pearl White -- in the 1917 serial ''The Fatal Ring,'' perhaps contributing to the misconception. (Somewhat [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] in that she wasn't actually chained or tied down; [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/The_Fatal_Ring.jpg/220px-The_Fatal_Ring.jpg the poster merely shows her lying unconscious on the rails.]])

* The ''1947'' Film/ThePerilsOfPauline film -- actually a musical biopic about actress Pearl White -- played this trope straight in a DeathTrap montage. The film was VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory, and arguably more of a {{Troperiffic}} homage to adventure serials in general [[ShallowParody than a direct copy of the original work.]]

This familiar scenario first appeared in the 1867 short story [[http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/pageviewer?frames=1&cite=http%3A%2F%2Fcdl.library.cornell.edu%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmoa%2Fmoa-cgi%3Fnotisid%3DACB8727-0003-99&coll=moa&view=50&root=%2Fmoa%2Fgala%2Fgala0003%2F&tif=00672.TIF&pagenum=653 "Captain Tom's Fright,"]] although a more rudimentary form of it was seen on stage in 1863 in the play ''The Engineer''. However, it really entered the meme pool as a result of its inclusion in the 1867 play ''[[http://www.josephhaworth.com/images/Producers%20&%20Managers/Augustin%20Daly/Under_the_Gaslight-Poster-cepia-Resized.jpg Under the Gaslight]]'', by Augustin Daly. (Interestingly, in ''Gaslight'' the victim is a male, not a fair maiden.) By 1868, it reportedly could be found in five different London plays all running at the same time, and remained a theatre staple for decades. Variations of this trope was used in the films ''The Train Wreckers'' (1905) and ''Buster in Nodland'' (1912) before appearing in its most iconic form in the 1913 Keystone Komedy film ''Film/BarneyOldfieldsRaceForALife'', where it was already PlayedForLaughs. It's commonly associated with the 1914 film serial ''Film/ThePerilsOfPauline'', but [[BeamMeUpScotty this is probably due to confusion]] (no one knows for sure, since neither the full serial nor the script have survived).

For more information, see [[http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mtiedtotracks.html this page]] at ''The Straight Dope'' website.

** Done in episode "The Good Old Days", a parody of old-timey cartoons. An old-timey version of Vicky is the bad guy, and she has Timmy's Grandpappy tied up. She attempts to put him on the train tracks, but it is crowded with similar villains. ("Beat it, Buster! ''We're'' working this side of the street!") She opts for a ConveyorBeltODoom at the local sawmill.

* This crops up in ''Film/KingsmanTheSecretService'' where the three candidates for the position of Lancelot end up drugged and [[TheHero Eggsy]] ends up tied to a track by a man demanding to know about Kingsman and Harry Hart. [[spoiler: This ends up being a SecretTestOfCharacter to see how devoted the candidates are. Eggsy and [[LittleMissBadass Roxy]] pass with flying colours. [[TheBully Charlie]]... [[DirtyCoward not so much]]]].

* In ''[[https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0015166/ Nellie the Beautiful Cloak Model]]'' from 1924, the eponynous Nellie (Claire Windsor) gets tied up by the evil Polly Joy (Mae Busch). A rare case of a woman doing this to another woman. This was apparently an attempt at playing the trope straight, but contemporay reports indicate that people had a hard time taking this seriously.

* Parodied in the movie ''Film/NightAtTheMuseum'' where the security guard is tied to toy train tracks by the miniature cowboys in a diorama.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheVentureBrothers'' features a memorable moment where "classic" villain The Red Death does this to an up and comer attempting to blackmail him. He then proceeds to lecture his victim on the merits of the process, its relatively cheap costs and the terror that comes with the growing anticipation of an oncoming train, plus the minor HopeSpot of escape.

* Obscure Example and variation: The manga sequel to ''Manga/BoboboboBobobo'', ''Shinsetsu Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo'', features a villian that captures both [[DamselScrappy Beauty]] and [[TeamPet Dengaku-man]], and he chains them up to the ''end'' of a downward-spiraling train track; Bo-bobo and his group must defeat all of the enemies on each of the trains in order to stop them in time. [[spoiler:Only Softon is able to fully stop one of the trains; at the last minute, Heppokomaru/Gasser is able to destroy all of them and save Beauty.]]

* ''[[ComicBook/SergioAragonesDestroysDC Sergio Aragones Destroys DC]]'' has one pair of tied damsels on the splash panel for his Superman story (keep magnifying glass handy).

* ''WesternAnimation/NumbChucks'': In "Hunk O Chuck", Fungus is MistakenForDying. To help him cross something off his BucketList, Dilweed kidnaps Burford and dresses him as a woman before tying him to the railway track so Fungus can fulfill his ambition of recuing a damsel who has been tied to railroad. HilarityEnsues.

->''"I'm afraid she's a little tied up at the moment, but don't fret- I have a feeling we'll be running into her shortly."''

* Played straight, probably for the first time in years, by ''Film/TheMatrix''. Rather than tying Neo to the tracks, immortal Agent Smith just puts him in a chokehold, and makes him watch the oncoming subway train. (Smith, being an [[RespawningEnemies Agent]], doesn't have to worry about dying himself.) Unfortunately for Smith, his goading triggers Neo's BerserkButton, and Neo escapes.

** PlayedWith in the 1915 episode [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrYrQ9VpJHs ''The Death Train'']], where Helen is tied to a railway bridge and then suspended underneath it. Fortunately, she manages to swing back up before the train comes and cuts the rope.

* Played straight, probably for the first time in years, by ''Film/TheMatrix''. Rather than tying Neo down, immortal Agent Smith just puts him in a chokehold and makes him watch the oncoming subway train. (Smith, being an [[RespawningEnemies Agent]], doesn't have to worry about dying himself.) Unfortunately for Smith, his goading triggers Neo's BerserkButton, and Neo escapes.

* In the ''FanFic/ThisTimeRound'' story "[[http://www.ttrarchive.com/mastertest1.html Master Test]]", the Jacobi Master, challenged to prove his evilness, decides to tie Mel to a railway. She complains that he's being unimaginative.

* Music/{{Chicago}}'s 1974 TV special "Meanwhile Back At The Ranch" is filled with old silent movie gags. One has a gender flip of this, with guitarist Terry Kath being tied up on the tracks by the villain, Anne Murray.