Basic Trope: The villain ties a sympathetic character to the railroad tracks as torture or attempted murder.
- Straight: The moustache-twirling Bob chains innocent barmaid Alice to the rails when she rejects him and threatens to leave her there unless she agrees to marry him.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob chains Alice to the rails for criticizing Charlie's suit, feeling it's an Even Evil Has Standards moment.
- Bob chains Alice to the rails alongside Carol, Diane, Eve, Francesca, Gillian and Hannah.
- Downplayed: Bob dangles Alice from a tree over the tracks.
- Justified: Alice has magic powers she could use to free herself but she cannot use them if she is touching cold iron.
- Inverted:
- The virtuous Alice chains the evil Bob to the rails.
- Bob ties Charlie's priceless toy train to a street right before a marathon.
- Subverted:
- Bob chains Alice to the rails... but the train hasn't run on that line for at least a decade.
- The train driver sees Alice tied to the track and promptly brings the train to a grinding halt.
- Double Subverted:
- ...but the disused line is next to a busy highway, and while Alice is distracted, she is run over by a car.
- ...but then the front end of the train breaks off from the friction and falls on top of Alice.
- Trains take awhile to stop. The train driver also has very poor eyesight. As a result, the train doesn't stop in time, and Alice is brutally run over anyway.
- Parodied:
- Bob chains Alice to a miniature railway and little electric trains bump harmlessly into her body.
- On a train journey into town, Charlie sees the track liberally strewn with helpless tied maidens.
- Bob can't find a spot to tie Alice to the tracks because other villains go there first with their victims.
- Announcements at the railway station say that the train will be delayed due to maidens tied to the track. Everyone acts as if this is a regular nuisance, like signaling failures.
- Alice is stripped naked and tied to a pole near the tracks. When the train arrives, the passengers notice her and take photos of her.
- Zig-Zagged: The train gets put into reverse before reaching Alice. Then starts going forward again. Then backward again. Then forward again...
- Averted: Bob does not tie Alice in such a way as to leave her in the path of something that could run her over.
- Enforced: "We love these Old West cartoons. Let's do a Shout-Out to them."
- Lampshaded: "I love tying people to the railway tracks; the classics are always the best, I tend to find..."
- Invoked: Bob always wanted to be an evil enough villain to actually tie someone to the railroad track.
- Exploited: Bob ties Alice to the tracks to distract Charlie while he sets about on another evil scheme.
- Defied: Bob glances at a railroad track and instantly decides against putting Alice to such an obvious and overly dramatic death.
- Discussed: "Well, you're just a regular Snidely Whiplash, ain't ya? Whatcha gonna do next, tie me to some tracks somewhere?" [Cue Gilligan Cut.]
- Conversed: "Railroad, maiden. Maiden, railroad. What else is he supposed to do in that sort of situation?"
- Implied: Only the engineer's cab is visible when the train passes through. A call from the conductor in the back mentions body parts trailing behind the train.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob is a Yandere who keeps Alice tied to a disused rail line near his home so that she cannot run away from him.
- It's pointed out repeatedly that (In-Universe and out) it's a Dead Horse Trope because of such things as Dudley Do-Right, and so anybody who tries it is inevitably going to be mocked as having seen too many episodes of it.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice is the daughter of a railroad baron who fired Bob and left him homeless, so he is murdering her in this way to symbolically injure her father.
- As Alice points out (while appropriately dressed like Snidely Whiplash as she ties down Bob because yeah, she loves Dudley Do-Right), sure, you think it's a very old-fashioned, overly-theatric, stupid and boring way to kill someone, but have you seen what happens when a 950-ton bundle of rolling steel the size of the Chrysler Building (which can't stop on a dime, by the way) rolls over a living being at 80 miles per hour? No? You're going to in about a minute. Play nice, now...
- Played for Laughs: "I'm going to TIE you to the RAILROAD TRACK!!" "What, again?"
- Played for Drama: Bob chains Alice to a railway and makes the murder look like a suicide, causing despair in Alice's family.
- Played For Horror:
- Alice is unable to get out of her bindings and can only spend the last two seconds of his life screaming as the billion-ton hunk of steel tries, quite futilely, to stop in time...
- Alice's death is shown with extreme Gorn.
Go back to Chained to a Railway, my pretty, or else!
