During the 1860s, a cult of sensation took full hold of cultures across much of Western Europe and North America; as the term “sensation” implies, this craze was linked to developments in neurology. This chapter focuses on one particular network in the construction of the modern neural subject, a network that connects elements as seemingly diverse as railway trains, changing notions of risk and trauma, and the newly popular form of melodrama dubbed “sensation drama,” with the emblematic scenario of the person tied to the train tracks and rescued in the nick of time. This “railway rescue” scenario emerged in the late 1860s, spread like wildfire, and continued in our collective consciousness to the present. This chapter traces the explosive rise and iconic significance of this scenario, and concludes by reading a Dickens short story that reflects on melodrama and the ghostly traumas of industrialized sensation.