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More powerful than a locomotive.

"If a train traveling at 250 miles per hour is stopped dead, the passengers will continue to travel at that speed (that is, double their terminal velocity). In other words, unless you stop the train slowly, they will have more chance of surviving if you had dropped them out of an airplane without a parachute. A safe stopping distance is several miles."
The Superhero Handbook by Michael Powell

Maybe a train is out of control, maybe a train is approaching a destroyed bridge, maybe someone is is chained to the tracks, maybe a villain is trying to escape via a train, or perhaps an action sequence involving trains is going out of control.

It's up to a Superhero to stop it!

This trope is usually used because it doesn't need a supervillain (although sometimes one does exist to derail the train). It shows, thus, that the superhero does more than just fight useless battles against supervillains, actually providing a visible good to society outside of his own rivalries.

In addition, it allows the hero to showcase his Super-Strength or Nigh-Invulnerability, and to save the lives of innocent people. It's also a good method of comparing heroes' relative power levels or gimmicks/gadgets. Superman just holds the train until it stops, while Spider-Man has to use webs attached to lampposts. So, stopping the train is almost like a graduation for a super hero. A bit like The Worf Effect, except Worf is a train. You're a nobody unless you can stop a large moving vehicle.

Used more in The Golden Age of Comic Books, when trains were a popular means of transportation in the US (where most Superhero stories come from), but still alive today. One could put on a tinfoil hat to mention that, if not for the supers, there would be a lot of train crashes, and it seems the train regulation committee forgot OSHA Compliance when they noticed some dude in a cape always appeared to save the passengers. For more modern takes on the trope, a crashing airplane or re-entering spacecraft work just as well.

Oh, also, sometimes there's just a hole in the bridge for the hero to fix. He'll usually put himself between the extremities and "act" as the missing rails.

See also Chained to a Railway, Railroad Tracks of Doom, Pedestrian Crushes Car, & Superhero. Do not confuse with Trainspotting, which, yes, this trope's name is a pun on.

One of the many methods for Cutting the Knot, as noted on the page.


Examples:

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    Advertising 
  • In a radio ad for SoBe Power energy drinks, the narrator proposes the listener might feel strong already, but they want to feel stronger. Strong enough to stop a train, in case of an emergency, or in case a pretty girl is tied to the track, and to impress her, the listener could stop the train with only one hand.

    Anime and Manga 
  • Multiple episodes of Anpanman have had Anpanman and some of his other superhero friends save SL-Man, a living steam locomotive, this way.
  • Dinosaur King: Averted in the episode "Planes, Trains and Dinosaurs". Going after a specific person on the Trans-Siberian Railway, Seth sends out Tank the Ankylosaurus to stop the train. He calls her back at the last second when he realizes it wouldn't work.
  • In Fist of the North Star, Kenshiro stopped Gyoko's train to save the villagers by breaking it with one hand. Obviously, the rider's safety wasn't his concern.
  • In Kinnikuman, the 21st Chojin Olympics had Train Pushing as one of the qualifier events. However, when Terryman sees a puppy has wandered into the path of his train, he immediately gets ahead of the train and stops it. Unfortunately, because the qualifier had rules about touching the train more than once, the act of heroism gets Terryman disqualified from the games.
  • In One Piece Franky tries to do this in order to rescue Tom, but he fails. He manages to live, though.
  • Near the end of the Gold/Silver/Crystal arc of Pokémon Adventures, Red makes his Big Damn Heroes return by calling out Snorlax to forcibly slow the runaway Magnet Train down to a stop before it crashes into a deadend.
  • In Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage, Fusion launches a tanker boat down a railroad-like ramp. The Suite Pretty Cure ♪ and Smile Pretty Cure! teams stop it, but barely... until Fusion swats them aside and sends it flying. Waiting at the bottom? Cure Black, Cure White and Shiny Luminous, who stop it effortlessly.
  • Symphogear:
    • The opening scene of the third season, GX, features the protagonists launching themselves onto a crashing space shuttle and using their Powered Armor's thrusters to slow its re-entry speed. This culminates in Chris opening a path for the shuttle by blasting through a mountain, Tsubasa mounting a BFS in front of it as a cowcatcher, and Hibiki bringing the vehicle to a halt by suplexing it.
    • The fourth season, AXZ, features a fight in an airport where Kirika and Shirabe hold onto the underside of a damaged plane and fuse their Morph Weapons into an improvised landing gear.
  • In the Unbreakable Machine-Doll, the two main characters pull this off in the first chapter.

    Comic Books 
  • In The Avengers volume 1, issue 1, the Hulk is tricked into destroying a train trestle. As a result he has to hold the tracks up so a train can pass safely.
  • Horribly deconstructed in The Boys using a plane. A corporate band of superheroes are sent to rescue the last 9/11 plane (in this verse, the CIA's warnings were heeded, and the other three planes were shot down by the Air Force). It starts to go downhill when they can't hear each other over the wind, then they open the door and a kid gets sucked out. Then the super who was supposed to pilot the plane falls out. It ends with the supers cutting their way out through the passengers in their desperation to get out (when asked why he doesn't hold up the plane, the Homelander replies that there's nothing for him to push against). And just to top it all off, the plane still crashes... into the Brooklyn Bridge instead of the WTC.
  • Big Bertha of the Great Lakes Avengers is shown doing this with a runaway semi. While the kids are happy to not die, the crossing guard laments being saved by such an unsexy superhero.
  • Green Lantern's first appearance.
  • In a 1902 strip of Hugo Hercules, the eponymous character uses his Super Strength to stop a street car so a woman can get on.
  • The Brubaker & Fraction run on Immortal Iron Fist culminates with Danny Rand punching a bullet train loaded with explosives.
  • Featured prominently on the cover of the April 1979 issue of Shogun Warriors, where Track Trouble has caused Combatra to pause a fight with Rok-Korr in order to catch the first car of the train before it falls into a ravine. (Passengers are still shown tumbling out of the open doors of the train car.)
  • Spider-Man: A miniseries called: Spider-Man: Power of Terror introduced a new Deathlok character (Deathlok is a Legacy Character of Zombie Cyborgs) that at one point was chasing Hydro-Man down the subway system, and he met up with a metro train about to ram in another one. He stopped it in a splash page, cementing his level of strength for the book.
  • Supergirl:
  • Superman loves it, and was probably the Trope Maker.
    • Trainstopping is the obvious way for Superman to demonstrate that he's "more powerful than a locomotive."
    • In the rebooted Action Comics #1, the first issue of Grant Morrison's run, Lex Luthor causes a Metropolis bullet train to go out of control. Superman is able to stop it, but being as this is set in his early days, when he was weaker and couldn't even fly yet, stopping the train almost kills him, allowing Lex and the military to capture him. (Added Stealth Pun: Superman has to be faster and more powerful than a speeding bullet locomotive!)
    • The picture is from Superman for All Seasons, when Superman has to stop the train because the conductor, like everyone else in Metropolis, has passed out due to a virus Lex Luthor unleashed upon the city.
    • In Wonder Woman 600 Superman stops a train after Aegeus wrecks a bridge, unfortunately the distance it takes to slow it down safely brings him back within range of Aegeus' magical attacks.
    • Parodied in a Sergio Aragonés drawn MAD strip, where Superman stops a train without moving an inch. The final panel shows the entire train derailed, with people lying everywhere, and Superman's got a Oh, Crap! expression on his face. In a similar gag, Superman lifts an ocean liner out of the water to save it from danger. It promptly breaks apart from having all of its mass supported by only his hands, with passengers falling out of the wreckage.
    • Superman later explains to his son, Jon Kent, that they have to stop the train slowly and not abruptly, lest it break apart and derail as mentioned above.
    • Superman does this in the Golden Age reality in The Dominus Effect to stop a train that is carrying Jews to a concentration camp to be exterminated.
  • Wonder Woman does this on occasion, especially in the Golden Age:
    • Di stops a train in More Fun Comics #1.
    • In Sensation Comics #26, Wonder Woman is tied to the railway tracks with what she thinks is her magic lasso. Once she realizes it is a fake, she is able to break loose and stop the train by lifting the locomotive off the tracks.
    • Wonder Woman (1942): During one of Diana's many Silver Age bouts of amnesia Steve Trevor reminds her of a time when she stopped two trains that were going to run headlong into each other while telling her of her exploits to try and jog her memory.
  • X-Men:
    • There was an issue in the late '90s that paired up Gambit and Bishop, and involved them stopping a runaway train. It let the writer have fun with the combination of powers, where Gambit (an Energy Maker) pumped the engine full of kinetic energy, and Bishop (an Energy Taker) absorbed all of it into himself, before riding the rails to slow the train.
    • A late '80s story had Rogue (with some help from Longshot's fabulous luck) stopping a train before it could plough into a pit made by the Juggernaut, leaving Psylocke and Dazzler to try and stop the Juggernaut on their own.
    • In Ultimate X-Men, Colossus is ordered to do this by Wraith, even though Colossus isn't even sure he'll survive it. The train is utterly demolished while Colossus is unscathed.
  • A parody comic featured Superman using his body to bridge a gap in a train track, with the engineers commenting that this happens regularly. Cut to Superman enjoying his vigorous back massage.

    Fan Works 
  • In Hunters of Justice, Team RWBY and Qrow help Jonah Hex stop the supervillain Cronos from stealing a Native American artifact from the past, but the train the artifact is kept on goes out of control. The heroes manage to disconnect the back cars but write off the engine and front car as lost. Then one of the natives who had been tracking the train and their stolen artifacts reveals himself to be Apache Chief, who grows into a giant to stop the speeding engine with his bare hands before it can careen into a canyon.

    Films — Animation 
  • In The Incredibles, Mr. Incredible stops an elevated train from crashing after a bomb accidentally destroys a piece of track, although several people sue him for the resulting injuries. Still, Mr. Incredible visibly cringes in preparation of the incoming slam; it won't kill him, but it is still going to hurt.
  • The Iron Giant has a variation, where the Giant must fix the rails... that he himself broke. Then he spends so long making sure the fix is perfect that the train ends up crashing into his head.
  • In Space Jam: A New Legacy, Daffy Duck (as "Super Duck") and Porky Pig (as his cameraman) have intentionally set up a Runaway Train by tying up the engineer. But just as Bugs Bunny (in the role of Batman) and LeBron James (in the role of Robin) have arrived to ask them to re-join the Tune Squad, Daffy ends up breaking the emergency brake lever he was trying to pull, and the train accelerates. But right before they can crash into an orphanage, Superman stops the train just in time (as per usual), not amused by Daffy's stunt.
  • In Superman vs. the Elite, '90s Anti-Hero Manchester Black when recounting his Origin Story to Superman shows himself doing this with his Psychic Powers to save his younger sister who had fallen in its path... while conveniently neglecting to mention that the impact killed a dozen passengers with MI6 covering the whole thing up.
  • The imagination setpiece at the opening of Toy Story 3 plays with this: Woody fails to save a Runaway Train filled with orphan trolls before it falls over a destroyed bridge... cue the Big Damn Heroes moment for Buzz Lightyear as he catches the train in midair and saves the day.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron: The fight between Ultron and Cap in Seoul takes them onto a speeding Seoul Metropolitan Subway train. When the freshly defected Maximoff twins come to Cap's aid, Ultron inadvertently kills the train's driver in the course of firing a laser blast at Pietro, and escapes. The train subsequently plows through a bumping block as it runs out of track and careens several blocks through the streets. Wanda uses her telekinesis to bring the train to a stop while Pietro runs ahead and clears the train's path of pedestrians.
  • Subverted in Batman Begins. Batman deliberately intends to cause the monorail train (built by his dad, no less) to crash by having Gordon blow up a piece of the beam with the Tumbler. He doesn't take Ra's al-Ghul in the train with him when he leaves, letting the subsequent explosion kill Ra's.
  • In Hancock, Hancock saves Ray by stopping a train from hitting his car. Somewhat like the trope picture, Hancock is a Flying Brick and straight up halts the train rather than slowing it gradually. As a result, he causes the train to derail into a messy pileup that will probably cost hundreds of thousands in damages and cleanup - Ray points out that it would have been much easier to just lift the car off the track.
  • A rare villain example occurs in Heroic Trio. The Dragon takes over a station and sends the train out of control. The heroes fight him until the train plows through the station wall, heading right for him. He tries to stop it a la Superman but ends up getting pinned to a wall.
  • Done (in the last method) in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie - "Angel Grove" (Sydney) Monorail, filled with the kids of Angel Grove, rushes off to try to stop the hypnotized parents. However, the Ivan Ooze/Hornitor fusion machine had destroyed part of the rail. Tommy sees this and pilots the Falconzord to use its back and wings as replacement tracks, allowing them to cross safely.
  • In Spider-Man 2, Octavius does this by disabling an 'L' train's brakes, and leaves Spidey to stop it. Peter jumps to the front of the train, and gives it three tries: First, he tries brute force via putting his foot down on the tracks to generate friction. This doesn't work, and hurts, and ruins a good number of ties. Then he tries firing weblines on either side. The train quickly breaks out when they stretch too far. So he tries again, firing a dozen weblines on each side, to spread out the force, which eventually does stop the train, but only after nearly pulling Spidey apart, and the first car is left hanging precariously off the structure.
  • In Superman: The Movie (1978), the title character does the "replace the rails with his body" bit to save a train from derailing after an earthquake rips a hole in the tracks.
  • Superman Returns does this with an airplane instead of a train, as a way to demonstrate that Superman has, well, returned.

    Literature 
  • Raising Steam: Constable Bluejohn, a troll even bigger than Detritus, stops a runaway train he's on (while going up a mountain, the locomotive is separated from the train) by reaching out a hand and grabbing the cliffside.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In The Flash, "Untouchable" has meta of the week, Clive Yorkin, using his powers to destroy an overpass and drop rubble onto a track in the path of a train full of passengers. To keep the passengers safe, Barry grabs firmly onto the train and vibrates so fast it causes the train to phase through the rubble safely.
  • Legends of Tomorrow: Nate Heywood AKA Steel, gets to do this at the climax of the Season 2 episode ''Outlaw Country'', preventing it from reaching the pass and exploding the load of dwarfstar ore it's carrying. He's visibly excited after he succeeds.
    Nate: (raising his fists into the air) I STOPPED THE TRAIN!
  • In Lois & Clark, Superman has to do this. However, this is in the 90s, in the scheme of things not terribly long Post-Crisis, so he has great difficulty doing it (when his Power Creep, Power Seep is at its most ridonkulous, the man who can move planets with his bare hands doesn't worry too much about trains. But this Supes ain't that Supes, with the writers having given him a significant Nerfing to make him easier to believably challenge.) Naturally, in the end he does prove to be "more powerful than a locomotive." The fact that it's hard for him averts the usual problem of horizontal Not the Fall That Kills You…: the train definitely slows down gradually instead of being stopped instantly (which would rightfully result in as much passenger squishification as being stopped with equal suddenness by a crash.)
  • Supergirl (2015):
    • After guiding a plane to a safe water landing in the pilot episode, Supergirl gets to stop her first train in the fourth episode, "How Does She Do It?" After failing to convince a suicide bomber in a mag-lev train's lead car not to activate his bomb, Supergirl decouples the rest of the train and slows it to a stop, allowing the car to carry the bomb to a safe distance.
    • In the second season's "Homecoming," in order to escape the villains detonate several charges on a train bridge, which just so happens to have a train incoming. Supergirl welds one of the rails back into place with Heat Vision and holds up the other herself as the train passes over.

    Music 

    Tabletop Games 
  • In Sentinels of the Multiverse, one of the hazards in Megalopolis is an out-of-control train. If the heroes don't do enough damage to the card, it deals enormous damage to the two targets with the highest HP. Given that one of these is usually the main villain, it can be advantageous to leave the card out — provided the next highest HP target doesn't mind. Also, one of Legacy's cards depicts him catching a locomotive — possibly the same one — and his flavor text quips, "Excuse me, I have a train to catch."

    Video Games 
  • Jonathan and Charlotte must team up to do this to a ghost train at one point in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.
  • Contra:
  • Fate/Grand Order: During the fourth Christmas event "Holy Samba Night", there's a Shout-Out to the Kinnikuman example where Saint Martha was disqualified from the wrestling tournament during the off-screen "Train Attack" event when she saved a puppy that wandered onto the tracks via this method. She has to settle for being a coach to the Chaldean team, specifically Bradamante.
  • In Final Fantasy VI, Sabin suplexes the Ghost Train. Or throws some magic bird feathers at it.
  • You have to shoot a runaway subway train into scrap in at least one Metal Slug title.
  • One sports event in Numan Athletics involves your selected athlete having to do this. Thankfully, being a Numan gives them the Super-Strength necessary for it.
  • According to its Pokedex entry, Hariyama from Pokémon actually has this ability.
  • In the strength-test arcade game Sonic Blast Man, one of the scenarios that has to be resolved by punching things as hard as you can is stopping an out-of-control train.
  • In Sonic Shuffle, the fourth stage's final game has Sonic and his friends stop a train with their bare hands. They're in a dream-like world, so it works.
  • Subverted in Star Fox 64. How do you stop the gigantic Forever Train? You blow it up. Starting at the back. Eventually, you reach the engine where the driver deploys a battle droid to fight you. Or for the advanced path, you hit eight switches along the way to open a lock on the track switcher and send it crashing into a fuel bunker.
  • The intro to Super Robot Wars Alpha 3 scales it up by having Unit 01 stopping a cruiser-sized Space Monster from crashing into the Excelion, but only slowing it down until Genesic GaoGaiGar plows through it with Hell and Heaven.
  • The Heavy does this at the climax of Team Fortress 2's "End of the Line" update video against a train headed for the bases's explosives stockpile. Even with the Heavy's Stout Strength and the Medic's ÜberCharge, some of the train cars get derailed and destroy some outlying buildings, but everyone survives in the end.
  • Subverted in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Perhaps to highlight Nate's accidental action hero status, the train he happens to be on at first starts off unscathed, until you are attacked by a Hind-D attack chopper, at which point the explosions start. The entire back end of the train is cut off, and the only reason you survive is because you go under a tunnel at the last second. The train gets stopped for good later when Nate shoots some propane tanks in a last stand, blowing the train up off the tracks, and it ends up dangling over a thousand foot deep Himalayan valley.
  • WarioWare: Touched!: Subverted. Wario as Wario Man tries to stop the train, then gets smashed halfway across the horizon and into a sewer.
  • A stage in Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner starts with a Battleship Raid against a train. Then Jehuty has to stop the flaming wreck manually, because a high-speed train keeps going at high speed, even after getting destroyed.

    Webcomics 
  • Mr. Mighty in Everyday Heroes has to do this to protect a Bus Full of Innocents.
  • A parody comic shows Superman replacing a gap in a bridge, with the engineers commenting that this an increasingly frequent occurence. The final panel is Superman enjoying his vigorous back massage.

    Web Original 
  • In three "Things to do in Grand Theft Auto V", the Achievement Hunter team attempts to do this with the train that drives around in Grand Theft Auto V. They tried with buses, a tunnel filled with dump trucks and an entire conga line of dump trucks. None of them stop it. Years later, they added in the Mobile Command Centers. Still didn't work!
  • One entry in the Darwin Awards was a man who tried to do this in real life, with predictable results.

    Western Animation 
  • In one episode of Ben 10: Omniverse, Ben as Bloxx replaces the missing tracks with his own body.
    Ben/Bloxx: Oh, is this going to hurt. *train passes over* YEEEOOWH!
  • Captain Planet and the Planeteers used this one, with the Captain saving a runaway monorail car.
  • The DC Animated Universe has several takes on this:
    • Batman: The Animated Series:
      • In "Christmas with the Joker", being Badass Normals, Batman and Robin are forced to stop the train through the relatively mundane method of disconnecting the carriages from the engine, then leaping off the train with the engineer in tow.
      • On another occasion, Batman is forced to stop a runaway tram, using the Batmobile. He manages to stop the tram, but also totals the car and has to continue his Race Against the Clock to stop a Time Bomb on foot.
      • One crossover episode has Batman and Superman team up to achieve this. Batman did a lot of the work to make it possible, but it still took Superman letting the bad guy get away to actually stop the train.
    • Superman: The Animated Series:
      • Surprisingly, Supes himself never full-on stops a train in this manner,note  but the villainous Metallo intentionally does to show his power in "The Way of All Flesh", causing a huge pile-up.
      • There's also another variation in "My Girl" where a terrorist uses his BFG to destroy a railroad bridge, forcing Superman to use himself as the tracks while the terrorist gets away.
      • In "Identity Crisis", Bizarro attempts to stop a bridge from "collapsing". Unfortunately, it's opening to let a boat through.
    • Justice League:
      • "Metamorphosis" opens with Green Lantern/John Stewart stopping a runaway train. It still crashes into a station, but without him, the damage would've been much worse.
      • Justice Lord Wonder Woman stops a train after an overpass is wrecked in "A Better World".
      • In "The Great Brain Robbery", Sinestro destroys a bridge so that a train full of gold is forced to hit the brakes. It doesn't stop in time, but Sinestro creates a replacement set of tracks to divert it to a nearby mountain cave where he can rob it blind. Hey, he has a Yellow Lantern Ring.
  • Played for Horror in the Invincible (2021) episode "Where I Really Come From". Omni-Man picks up the titular hero and holds him directly in front of an onrushing subway train. This results in Invincible's invulnerable body tearing through the train—and its hundreds of passengers—like a bullet through Styrofoam, much to Invincible's horror.
  • In Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Iron Man does both the push and pull versions in the pilot. He first attempts to stop a four-car train from the front. This particular model has a door on the front, though, so it just collapses under his weight. Then he disconnects the other cars so he can pull the first to a stop. This doesn't work completely, but he slows it down enough to lift it into the air once it flies off the unfinished track.
  • In the Miraculous Ladybug episode "Queen Wasp", Chloé/Queen Bee attempts to invoke this trope by paralyzing a subway driver so she can stop the train and look like a hero. Unfortunately, she isn't strong enough to stop the train herself (although she is durable enough to survive being pushed along the tracks at high speed), so Ladybug and Chat Noir have to come to the rescue, with Ladybug using her Killer Yo-Yo to slow the train enough that Chat can block it with his Telescoping Staff at the next station.
  • The New Adventures of Superman: In "The Iron Eater", Clark Kent is travelling on a train when the eponymous monster eats the tracks in front of the train. Clark has to do a fast train change to Superman and stop the train before it derails.
  • In his first theatrical cartoon, Popeye saves Olive Oyl, who is Chained to a Railway, by punching out the train at the last second.
    • In another cartoon, Bluto pretends that he's Superman and can stop a train with his own strength. The train actually stopped of its own volition - they're standing just outside the train stop and the train had slowed to a stop right before reaching his hand.
      • At the end of that cartoon, Bluto ties Olive to the railroad tracks and Popeye has to stop the oncoming train. He stops it exactly the same way he did in his first cartoon.
  • The Powerpuff Girls have to stop two trains (on the same track, mind) from colliding with each other as one of the riddles posed by Him ("Him Diddle Riddle").
  • The Secret Saturdays: Fiskerton has to stop a runaway train before it smashes into the end of an unfinished tunnel in "Target: Fiskerton". He grabs hold of the rear of the train and digs his feet in, snapping sleepers as he goes.
  • In a Shout-Out to Spider-Man 2, The Spectacular Spider-Man does this. Spectacularly. In that case it was an 18-wheel semi.
  • Super Chicken tries to do this in the opening of his cartoon shorts; the train just plows him over.
  • Superfriends:
    • In 1973-74 episode "The Power Pirate", Superman saves a train rolling backwards down a mountain by using his strength to bring it to a stop.
    • In the opening title for the 1973-74 season, Superman is shown stopping a runaway train by grabbing the train's back end and pulling until the train stops. This may be a unique case, but it's a lot safer than the other method.
    • In one episode Wonder Woman stops two trains on a collision course with each other, by standing between them and pushing hard in both directions. (How this is materially different from an actual collision, only the scriptwriters can tell you.)
  • The Superman Theatrical Cartoon "Billion Dollar Limited" has Superman inverting it, doing everything he can to keep the train going, including saving it from falling into a canyon when the bridge is dynamited by the bad guys. It's on YouTube here: the scene starts around 6:00. He eventually ends up pulling the train himself all the way to its destination.
  • Teen Titans (2003):
    • Bumblebee is forced to stop a subway train (while trapped in her minimum size) before it reaches a certain destination, or a bomb will go off. She doesn't stop the train, but she did manage to stop the timer on the bomb.
    • In the same episode, Más Y Menos have to keep a train from going over a broken bridge. They don't stop the train, but they do pull the switch so it goes onto another (not broken) track.
  • Transformers: Prime:
    • Optimus Prime gets to do this when a train carrying a nuclear device is heading towards tracks that were just destroyed. He also did it the right way, taking his time to gradually slow it down.
    • In another episode, Knockout stops an out of control subway sweeper train...with his face.
  • Winx Club has an unusual example in that a villain, Gantlos, does this to save his ally Ogron from being run over. His shockwave stops the train from full speed.
  • Subverted in X-Men: Evolution. Two trains, one carrying fuel, the other passengers, were diverted onto one set of tracks, heading towards each other. Attempting to save the day, Jean tries to slow down one train. Jean, however, simply isn't that good, so Kitty has to phase one through the other. Kitty likewise isn't that good, so Stuff Blowing Up ensues.

    Real Life 
  • At 1 G of acceleration, a superhero could stop a 250 mile per hour train in 11.4 seconds over a distance of 637 meters. For a far more typical 79 MPH train, 3.6 seconds over 63.6 meters. On the other hand, at that level, the train would tend to crumple, like trying to stand a rope on end. Matching real trains' real emergency braking of .15 G would stop a 250 MPH train in 76 seconds over 4244 meters, or a 79 MPH train in 24 seconds over 424 meters.


 
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Spider-Man stops a train

After the evil Dr. Otto Octavius disables the train's brakes, it's up to Spider-Man to save the helpless passengers.

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