My paper explores the emergence of working class delinquency in World War I Egypt. Specifically, my paper examines the labour codes and regulations that governed railway labourers while it was under construction and after it began to operate. These codes were repeatedly sabotaged by the labourers, who were subsequently punished, dismissed, or tried by a “Special Council”. Notably, the severity with which a certain offence was met mutated according to changing political circumstances. During the First World War, offences previously punishable by fines began to cost labourers their jobs. New categories also emerged. Whereas before the War, only “Punishments” were recorded in official administrative reports, in 1914 a “Blacklist” and a list of those “Dismissed and not to be Re-engaged in any Department” also emerged. How did these categories emerge? And how were railway labourers constructed as specific kinds of delinquents who were fitted into these categories? My paper answers these questions in two ways. First, my aim is to examine the ways in which the subjectivity of the labourer was informed by the specific materiality of the railway. The labourer is not a subject whose traits and class identity can be assumed. Rather, the labourer was constructed through a certain set of material, legal, and epistemological practices specific to the railway and to how the British imagined a railroad system should function. At the same time, labour resistance was precisely what engendered the “delinquent”. Since, in the eyes of colonial Britain, a labourer was to be hard-working and disciplined, someone who committed an “offence” had to be something else, a delinquent whose punishment could now be justified. Second, I examine the relationship between debt and the nature of these “offences”. The labourers who built and operated the railway were largely indebted due to rising prices and war-time fiscal policies. To make ends meet, they often stole railway-transported cargo either for immediate consumption or in order to re-sell it. How Britain punished these “offences” depended on the significance of the stolen material to its war machine and to its commerce. In addition to secondary sources, my analysis is primarily drawn from the Fortnightly Traffic Notices, a series of confidential reports issued by the Railway Department of the British colonial administration. I also consult a broad range of financial and “Debt Review” reports which include detailed information on the material transported on the railway and the financial conditions of Egypt.