History Main / RailroadTracksOfDoom

* The UsefulNotes/NewYorkCitySubway kills about one person a week (58 in 2014, 50 in 2016), and the statistics are printed on the back of MetroCards and in train cars. A good portion are suicides, followed by clueless passengers hopping over the platform to retrieve something they dropped. It's possible to dodge an oncoming train by simply [[ByWallThatIsHoley rolling under the gap beneath the platform]], but nobody ever thinks to do this (at least not on purpose). Occasionally, some of these track fatalities occur by touching the electrified third rail and [[HighVoltageDeath getting zapped to death]]. Another problem posed by track fatalities is that they in turn disrupt service, frustrating riders even more.

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'': In "Death in a Chocolate Box", the murderer attempts to escape from Barnaby by hitting him while the car is stopped at a set of boom gates waiting for a train to pass. The murderer leaps out of the car and attempts to dash across the tracks ahead of the oncoming train. They don't make it.

* ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' often features trains that the player must be wary of.

* ''VideoGame/FreedomFighters2003'' has a couple levels with trains that can't be destroyed and can kill the player.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheAristocats'': The cats are crossing a railroad trestle. A train approaches from the front, they jump underneath for safety. One of them falls into the river below.

* In Disney's ''WesternAnimation/TheFoxAndTheHound'', Chief chases Tod the fox onto a set of nearby railroad tracks, and then they begin to cross a trestle. As their luck would have it, a high-speed train comes barreling towards them. Tod is able to duck underneath the rails and let the train harmlessly pass over him, but the locomotive knocks Chief off the trestle, causing him to fall to the rocky river below with a broken leg. Chief was actually supposed to ''die'' this way, making Copper's revenge against Tod more extreme, but Disney thought this would've been too over-the-top and intense.

* Happens to [[LoanShark Sykes]] at the end of ''WesternAnimation/OliverAndCompany''. Done ''literally'' with his pet dobermans, however (they're electrified subway rails due to the third rail, so when Oliver and Dodger threw them off Sykes' car, the two are both immediately electrocuted upon hitting those tracks, and because of the third rail's voltage, the electrocution was fatal).

** Early on in ''{{WesternAnimation/Cars}}'': Lightning [=McQueen=] is nearly hit by a freight train after accidentally being knocked out of his trailer thanks the Delinquent Road Hazards' antics and is left behind, before mistaking a grouchy semitruck for his own truck and then arriving at Radiator Springs and destroying their main road in the process.

Compare TrainStopping.

** In as urban an area as that appeared to be, definitely; there are less urban areas that do not have gates that that could happen. Would have to be pretty stupid to get onto the tracks without guaranteed room to get off, though.

* Union Pacific – and other railroad companies and, much later, Operation Lifesaver – came out with several other driver's education films stressing railroad safety and depicting the deadly consequences of car-train collisions. Examples:
** ''Film/LookListenLive'', produced by UP in the mid-1940s (circa 1948-1949). One of the dramatizations is of a family of five who, en route to a park for a picnic, are killed when their car collides with a train after the father (who was driving) neglected to look for trains before driving across the tracks, insisting "there are no trains this time of the day" - the moral, of course, being that a train can be expected at any crossing at any time of the day. The story of the ill-fated picnic trip famously also shows a terrier waiting for his masters to return home – set to the tune of "Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone" – unaware that the wait will be in vain. Film clips of three other crossings where deadly collisions had taken place are also shown, as is a re-enactment of a young, high-strung driver who barely avoids his own car-train collision, and is visibly shaken after managing to stop his car a short distance away from the tracks... wondering what might have been... and lucky.

* Subverted in the movie ''Film/OctoberSky'': The boys rip up the tracks of a supposedly-abandoned spur line to sell the iron for scrap. One of the boys lampshades this trope, asking if the the tracks really are unused. Sure enough, the moment they've got the heavy rail fully out of alignment, they hear a whistle... Frantically, they try to get the rail back in place, seemingly to no avail as the locomotive bears down on them... Then at the last moment, the train turns away down the main line; and the camera pulls back to reveal that the line they tore up ''was'' inactive. As the train passes, the engineer gives them a wave and a confused look.
** For just this reason, it is illegal for US scrapyards to accept railroad ties, spikes, rails or any other part of the track. Probably wasn't the case back then though as the film takes place in the late [[TheFifties 1950s]].

** Early on in ''{{WesternAnimation/Cars}}'': Lightning [=McQueen=]is nearly hit by a freight train after accidentally being knocked out of his trailer thanks the Delinquent Road Hazards' antics and is left behind, before mistaking a grouchy semitruck for his own truck and then arriving at Radiator Springs and destroying their main road in the process.

** Early on in ''{{WesternAnimation/Cars}}'': Lightning McQueen is nearly hit by a freight train after accidentally being knocked out of his trailer thanks the Delinquent Road Hazards' antics and is left behind, before mistaking a grouchy semitruck for his own truck and then arriving at Radiator Springs and destroying their main road in the process.

* {{UsefulNotes/Bangkok}},{{UsefulNotes/Thailand}} has an outdoor street market with a railroad track going through it.
* {{UsefulNotes/Hanoi}},{{UsefulNotes/Vietnam}}'s "Train Street" is a narrow alleyway with a railroad track going through it.