A manly hero coming to the rescue of a beautiful damsel in distress has been a common trope
since literally the earliest days of theater, going all the way back to the Ancient Greeks.
As the centuries passed, mythical creatures were replaced by more mundane dangers- notable
to the topic at hand is the common trope of top hat clad, magnificently mustachioed villains
tying buxom damsels to railway tracks while a dashing hero rushes in to save the day.
So where exactly did this railway trope actually come from and are there any known cases of
someone actually doing this in real life?
To begin with, while your first instinct might be to assume that this trope originated during
the era of silent films, this isn’t quite correct, though it is true you can find isolated
examples of this in a few surviving films.
For example, the 1913 film Barney Oldfield’s Race for a Life is commonly touted as the
first film to feature the “chained to a railway” scene, including a mustachioed
villain wearing a fetching hat, a beguiling beauty tied to the railway tracks and a daring,
last-minute rescue by a handsome hero.
The thing is, this was a comedy specifically created to lampoon the trope.
In another similar example, we have the 1917 film Teddy at the Throttle in which the fair
maiden, played by Gloria Swanson, humorously rescues herself from peril because the “dashing”
hero arrives too late.
To find the true origin of the trope, at least in terms of what popularized it, we have to
go back to stage plays, with it commonly stated that Augustin Daly’s 1867 play, Under the
Gaslight by American was first.
This does indeed contain such a scene, in this case where a character named Snorkey
is tied to the rails by a man named Byke.
As he’s doing this, Byke exclaims,
I’m going to put you to bed.
You won’t toss much.
In less than ten minutes you’ll be sound asleep.
There, how do you like it ? You’ll get down to the Branch before me, will you?
You dog me and play the eavesdropper, eh I Now do it if you can.
When you hear the thunder under your head and see the lights dancing in your eyes, and
feel the iron wheels a foot from your neck, remember Byke!
Thankfully for Snorkey, in a sort of reversal of the gender roles in the scene, a damsel
named Laura manages to come to his rescue and free him just before the train arrives.
While, as noted, Daly is commonly given credit for coming up with the idea, it turns out
this isn’t correct at all; it was simply his play that popularized it.
For example, sticking with theater, if you dig a little deeper, a similar scene also
appeared in a previous play called The Engineer released in 1863 in Britain.
Nevertheless the effect the scene in Daly’s play had on the audience was so good that
rival playwrights quickly began including “railroad scenes” in their own melodramas,
much to Daly’s chagrin.
To try to protect the concept he felt he’d come up with, he decided to sue those who
used it in their own plays.
Despite instances like a short story, Captain Tom’s Fright, released before Daly’s play
featuring an extremely similar scene being used by the defense, the courts weren’t
persuaded and the case became a landmark one in the history of copyright law in the United
States.
It was specifically ruled that copying the essence of a scene closely in other plays
did indeed infringe on intellectual property rights, even if no words were copied and it
wasn’t literally the exact same scene.
Nevertheless, theatre promoters heroically ignored this ruling, continuing to rip Daly
off anyway, presumably dually under the assumption that Daly wouldn’t get around to suing everyone
and that if enough modifications were made to the scene they’d probably get away with
it either way.
Similarly back in the UK, the trope also spread like wildfire with one Nicholas Daly noting
in his paper, Blood on the Tracks: Sensation Drama, the Railway, and the Dark Face of Modernity,
“In October 1868 the railroad scene could be witnessed in five different plays at five
different London theaters.”
So that’s how the trope was popularized, but has anyone ever actually been tied to
a railroad track in that way?
It turns out, while it’s rare- yes.
There are several known instances of this happening.
For example, according to the August 31, 1874 issue of the New York Times, a Frenchman identified
by the paper as simply “Gardner” was killed in this exact manner after being robbed and
left tied to a railway track.
However, in this specific case the unfortunate Frenchman was able to partially free himself,
with the result being only the lower half of his left leg being severed.
Gardner survived long enough to offer a description of his attackers to the authorities before
succumbing to his injuries.
It’s noteworthy that this and several other known cases in the following decades came
after the ubiquity of the trope in theater, despite that trains had been around long since.
Thus, much like the idea of mobsters putting “concrete shoes” on people to send them
to sleep with the fishes, it would seem this was first thought up by entertainers only
to be copied in various isolated instances by real life people.
As for a more modern example of the train trope, and one which actually includes a damsel,
this involves another Frenchman, Guillaume Grémy, in 2017.
Unfortunately for all involved, not only was Guillaume not sporting a magnificent moustache
and top hat at the time of his crime, he also completely took the fun out of the thing.
You see, Guillaume was suffering from severe depression at the time.
When efforts to get back together with his estranged wife, Émilie Hallouin, failed,
he decided on her 34th birthday to bind her to a high-speed railway track using, to quote
a police spokesman, “strong adhesive tape”, and then stood over her as the train approached.
Sadly, real life being real life, there was no dashing hero to save the day here and tragically
for the couple, their toddler child and other respective children, the pair were killed
instantly when the train hit them at a reported 200 MPH…
So, yes, indeed there have been several known cases of people being murdered via being placed
on railroad tracks, but sadly, as far as we can tell, rescue after the villain places
the victim on the tracks seems to be something only found in fiction.
It has long been rumored that
as part of its notoriously brutal selection process the SAS will tie prospective recruits
to a railway track whilst blindfolded to teach them how to stay calm under pressure.
The SAS trainers will then feign panic and pretend that something has gone wrong all
while the sound of an oncoming train can be heard.
In reality, the recruit is tied to an adjacent piece of track and trainers will observe what,
if anything, the recruit does during their predicament.
Beyond tying the living to tracks, there are also known cases of people putting the dead
on tracks to try to get away with murder by making it look like an accident.
Perhaps the most well-known example of this is the 1993 case of two year old James Bulger.
We’ll spare you the truly horrific details of the murder itself at the hands of two young
boys, but suffice it to say that in an attempt to make the death look an accident, the two
kids placed the already mangled tiny body onto a railway track.
It was subsequently run over, but this did little to hide the preexisting injuries and
the police soon enough tracked down the two young perpetrators.