The railyard worker alerts the Suitor about the situation, who then rushes to ask his friend, racecar driver, Barney Oldfield for help.

After watching the film, Oldfield was said to have sadly shook his head and quipped: "For this kinda actin' I should have been hit by a custard pie.

"[5] In 1913, Motography reported that an agent for the Santa Fe Railway, gave Sennett permission to use the old Redondo Road, and a late model locomotive, baggage car and passenger coach in the film, and that a special permit was obtained from Inglewood, California authorities for Oldfield to go the limit in the speed line.

Cinematographer Lee Bartholomew, was standing on the running board of the locomotive, photographing "every move of the villain at the throttle, while Walter Wright with another camera, was filming the race between the train and the automobile and the rescue".

[7] Author Chuck Klosterman says the plot of a villain tying a young damsel to the railroad tracks, dates back to the 1860s, and by 1913, the "trope had been adopted completely".

[8] American media scholar Henry Jenkins and author Kristine Brunovska Karnick said that Sennett used the "race to the rescue" scenario to capitalize on its "thrilling and suspenseful qualities", and then "exploited those qualities for purely visceral pleasure", thereby "stripping the narrative situations in the film of their usual emotional or moral weight".

A rip-roaring riot of fun, with the greatest comedy director Mack Sennett;[13] Barney Oldfield in moving pictures should be a treat in itself;[14] a unique film, a combination of sensational, thrilling and humorous melodrama.

[15] Author Rob King said the film's "popularity resided precisely in their ability to fuse comic pleasure with genuine thrills, promoting hybridized viewing experiences that straddled the effective registers of slapstick and sensation melodrama".

He argues the film "doesn’t hold up that well, and isn’t even of great historical interest, inasmuch as it seems to lead people to false conclusions".

[23] In 1957, the film still was featured in the book The Laugh Makers: A Pictorial History of American Comedians by William Cahn.

[26][a] Daniel Buttridge of The Independent, credits the film for the "stereotypical mustachioed meanie", which became a "cultural convention", that he says, is still employed "by all manner of media almost a century later".