Has it actually happened? It was the classic movie cliche but is there any proof to this actually happening one time?
Just wondering if I will be the first!
How about the buzz saw bit?
Vaudeville writers had some pretty twisted fantasies.
Elmer J. Fudd,
Millionaire.
I own a mansion and a yacht.
I believe the play “Blue Jeans” (1880s, I think) started the whole deal. In it, the hero was tied to a buzz-saw and the heroine rescued him.
The most famous film of the railroad track gag was from the Mack Sennett 2-reel comedy “Teddy at the Throttle” (c1917), with Wally Beery tying Gloria Swanson to the tracks—but by that time, it had already become a tired old joke, and this was a parody. It’s always shown in compilations as a perfectly serious mellerdrama, though . . .
Dudley Doright = Hero
Penelope = Damsel
Snidely Whiplash = villain
Dudley is a Mountie ( Officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP)
This was a fmaous cartoon in Canada… I doubt it started, but it is, atleast up here, where the whole thing became prevalent.
“C’mon, it’s not even tomorrow yet…” - Rupert
If you need a graphic solution, http:\ alk.to\Piglet
Looking to the OP, it seems as though none of us has answered the question…
INHO, I doubt very serisouly that this has ever happened. This excrutiatingly slow and problem ridden way of off-ing someone is the sort of thing that only happens in movies like James Bond and Austin Powers.
If it ever has happenned, it was probably some twisted movie copycat, like they had in Scream, but then, I have sorta just proved my point… that sort of thing generally only hapenns in the movies.
“C’mon, it’s not even tomorrow yet…” - Rupert
If you need a graphic solution, http:\ alk.to\Piglet
Yes it did indeed happen, but the guy who did it did not really have a mustache. That was just added later as a disguise so that he would not sue filmakers for royalties.
Also, he did not wear a black top hat or black clothes. He wore a gray fedora and and a brown suit (He was not very good at color coordinating.)
He did not really have an evil laugh, much more of a snicker.
The hero was kind of a dumpy guy, not really much to look at.
The girl was really an older lady and it was not so much tied to train tracks as it was pushed in front of a bus.
So really you can see that the story has been modified greatly to protect the not so innocent.
Jeffery
I believe that the first time that the pointy mustached villan dressed in black was in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and his name was Simon Legree.
The first play to ever feature someone tied to the railroad tracks was “Under the Gaslight” by Augustin Daly, written in 1867. In it, the hero was tied to the tracks by the villain, and was rescued by the heroine. The scene ended with the line (paraphrased) “And these are the women who aren’t allowed to vote.”
I read the play many years ago. It’s kind of fun, and probably would be nice to stage, if it wasn’t for a horribly racist stereotype of one of the minor characters.
Daly also invented the buzzsaw bit, but I don’t know which of his plays it was in. A true genius of the theater. 
“East is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does.” – Marx
Read “Sundials” in the new issue of Aboriginal Science Fiction. www.sff.net/people/rothman
CURSE you, Reality Chuck! I was just reading a bio of Augustin Daly, and was about to rush in with the “Under the Gaslight” reference . . . Foiled again!
But I can elaborate: It was the character actor, not the hero, who was tied to the tracks, and when the heroine rescued him, he exclaimed, “Victory! Saved! And these are the women who ain’t to have a vote!”
In 1868, Daly wrote “The Red Scarf,” which introduced the tied-to-a-buzz-saw gag. Daly claimed to have invented the tied-to-a-railroad-track scenario; highly doubtful, but he won several lawsuits over it.
It’s interesting that in the 19th century it was always a woman rescuing a man from certain doom—wonder when that reversed?
—Eve [flinging a shawl around her lily-white shoulders and exiting into the storm]