My paper explores the instrumentalisation of mobility as part of the work discipline in nineteenth and early twentieth century Egypt. Specifically, my paper examines the compulsory reshufflings and transfers of railway labourers in a specific system of reward and punishment. From the minute they were recruited, railway workers were made to understand that their ability to enhance their conditions was subject to “good behaviour.” The railway administration also controlled the freedom of their employees by confining them to labour camps and placing them under military surveillance. What was the logic that informed the system of reward and punishment? Which labour practices were deemed worthy of promotion and which ones were punishable by transfers? Where were punished labourers transferred to? More generally, how did control over freedom and mobility emerge as part of the work discipline? My paper answers these questions in two ways. First, I investigate the hierarchical system that defined the responsibilities of the labourers, their rights, and compensation. As my paper shows, this system was not merely informed by the technical qualifications of the labourers. Rather, labourers had to have political profiles which qualified them to assume their positions in the hierarchy. This hierarchical system was also not fixed. When new circumstances arose, the labourers were reshuffled and transferred to meet the new demands of the railway administration. Yet, certain positions, such as locomotive driving, remained off-limits to Egyptian labourers. My paper examines the assumptions and prejudices that excluded Egyptian workers from these positions. Second, I investigate the specific construction of labourers as necessarily mobile subjects in a colonial apparatus which expected them to be in constant supply without regard to the social bonds they formed in the places in which they lived and worked. Without legal protection, these labourers often found themselves forced to move to new cities and towns far away from their homes. Yet, the labourers often challenged this forced mobility by deserting their worksites and attempting to escape. My paper explores these attempts. In addition to secondary sources, my analysis is primarily drawn from the diaries of workers, witnesses, and travellers and from the Fortnightly Traffic Notices, a series of confidential reports issued by the Railway Department of the British colonial administration.