The Brave Engineer

The Brave Engineer is a Disney animated short, which is released originally theatrically on March 3, 1950, and is now available on the American Legends home video release. It also appears on Four Fabulous Characters in Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Colors in 1957, and Stick To It, Don't Give Up! in Sing me a Story with Belle in 1999.

Synopsis
The film opens with an overhead shot of the Illinois Central Railroad's sprawling railroad yard in the morning, where all the trains are fast asleep, except Casey Jones's locomotive, No. 2: Cannonball, which is slow asleep. The shot begins to focus on Cannonball and eventually cuts to a closeup of the cab window, where Casey is revealed to be sleeping in his engine's cab.

Doffing his bedclothes (he is fully dressed in blue overalls and a stereotypical engineer's cap underneath), he checks his watch and realizing that he is behind schedule, hurriedly readies Cannonball to depart. Mail is loaded aboard the train and with a toot on the whistle, Casey sets off at a dangerously high speed through the maze of switches and sidings, nearly t-boning two other trains in the process before making it safely out of the yard (much to the switchman's relief).

At first, the trip is uneventful and we see Casey relaxing in a rocking chair in front of the open firedoor, casually stoking it one piece of coal at a time as if it were a parlour stove. Further on, however, the weather turns nasty, flooding the tracks like "the bed of a creek" and all but swamping the train. Eight hours late, but nonetheless undaunted, Casey climbs up on the cab roof and uses his coal shovel as a paddle. Before long, he has cleared the flood and is on his way again.

No sooner is the train back up to full speed, though, then Casey is forced to bring it screeching to a halt: standing in the middle of the tracks grazing, is a large brown cow which finally moves aside after much shouting and whistle blowing on Casey's part.

Unfortunately, a new problem presents itself. A stereotypical villain with a black handlebar mustache has tied a lady to the tracks in front of Casey's train. Unwilling to waste any more time stopping, Casey rushes forward, stands on Cannonball's cowcatcher, and scoops up the terrified woman just seconds in the moment in which the train is about to run her over. The villain turns to the camera and exclaims theatrically, "Curses! Foiled again!" Casey is in such a hurry now, that he doesn't even stop to let her off, depositing her (rope and all) in the arms of a pleasantly surprised station master as he rushes past the next platform at full speed.

Hours later, night has fallen and we find Cannonball steaming full-bore through a narrow, snow-covered mountain pass. As the train passes over a high trestle spanning a gorge however, another stereotypical villain who is "not on the level" nearly brings things to an explosive end. Once again undaunted by a seemingly impassable obstacle, Cannonball struggles, huffing and puffing, up the side of the gorge and continues on its way.

A short while later, the camera focuses on a backside shot of a group of armed men on horseback as they watch the train from up on a hillside in a desert. Casey is about to get his train attacked by train robbers! The next shot finds the whole gang inside the cab, brandishing their guns and knives menacingly. At first, Casey is so caught up in stoking the boiler, that he is oblivious to their presence. It is in the next moment that he accidentally picks up one of the bandits along with his coal shovel-full of coal that he finally notices the uninvited company. Even then, Casey is more annoyed by the distraction than anything else and begins to fight the train bandits, hitting them repeatedly with his coal shovel while continuing to stoke the boiler.

After quickly throwing the last of the would-be thieves off the train, Casey checks his watch and is horrified to discover that the train thieves have put him behind schedule once again. Determined to make up for lost time whatever the cost, he opens the throttle so wide that he actually rips the handle from its mount and throws it away.

The scenery outside quickly becomes a blur as the train travels faster and faster. Casey adds more coal to the furnace, and, when running out, also uses his coal shovel and rocking chair, until the ribbing on Cannonball's boiler exterior is forced off. Casey gives Cannonball some running repairs while the train roars down a hill.

Just a bit further away, while otherwise occupied, Casey doesn't notice that another train, a slow freight train, double-headed by a pair of 4-8-0s is coming toward him on the same track, although Casey is too busy fixing Cannonball's dome to notice. An elder engineer, with a corn-cob pipe in his mouth, who is piloting his front engine, upon seeing Casey's train coming toward him, gasps 'Egad!', suddenly blows the whistle, says 'E-e-egad!', and begins to let the others know that Casey's train is heading toward them like a bullet. The brake-man of Casey's train, upon seeing the double-headed slow freight train, gasps, climbs out of the caboose, and runs up to Cannonball to tell Casey about the oncoming train, but Casey can't hear the brake-man, who continues to warn about the other train, which is still approaching. As the train speeds down the mountain, the conductor blows the whistle, and then fails to get the message through from Casey. As the conductor says 'So long.', he jumps off the train, and now in the next shot, a far away view from Casey's train, is still seen on Cannonball's roof in the next shot. The crews of the double header, upon seeing Casey's train, gasp and jump off their engines with their freight train unharmed and run for cover, and just as Casey sees the other train, he finally gasps 'Egad!' one more time, and the two trains collide with a humongous explosion.

Afterwards, we are taken to a station, presumably the one Casey is meant to terminate at, and, with Casey being late, the Porter fears the worst. Then, much to his joy and surprise, Casey rolls down the hill in the remains of Cannonball carrying a bag of mail.

A beaten up Casey then shows his watch with pride, it stating he is 'ON TIME-ALMOST'. And the Narrator says 'Next time, take the train!'

Characters

 * Casey Jones

Differences between the cartoon and real life

 * The Brave Engineer depicts the wreck near Vaughan, Mississippi as a head-on collision with a train steaming in the opposite direction, in an Ozark-like mountain range. In the real accident, Jones' engine struck the rear end of a train which was stopped on the tracks due to a broken air line, and it did not occur in a mountain area.The accident takes place in broad daylight and clear conditions in the cartoon. The real life wreck occurred at night during a rain storm.The Brave Engineer ends with Casey looking a little beat-up after the wreck, but very much alive. In real life, Jones was critically injured and did not survive the accident.


 * Casey's engine in the cartoon is number 2, an American Standard 4-4-0. His real engine on the fateful trip is number 382, a Ten-Wheeler 4-6-0.Casey is depicted operating the engine single-handedly in the cartoon. The real life Casey Jones has an African-American fireman, Simeon "Sim" Webb, who is with him until mere seconds before the crash.

Censorship

 * Like many classic cartoons produced by Disney and other studios, The Brave Engineer has recently been subject to US censorship editing in a controversial attempt to make it more "politically correct" in the US, by removing weapons such as knives and guns. In this case, a brief scene depicting train robbers brandishing knives and guns has been edited out.

Additional information

 * Distributed by Buena Vista Distribution Co., Inc.
 * Color by Technicolor.
 * Release Date: March 3, 1950
 * Director: Jack Kinney
 * Animators: Milt Kahl, Fred Moore, Al Bertino
 * Effects Animation: Andy Engman.Layout: Don DaGradi
 * Backgrounds: Ray Huffine.Writers: Dick Kinney, Dick Shaw
 * Musical Score: Ken Darby
 * Based on "The Ballad of Casey Jones" by Eddie Newton, T. Lawrence Seibert
 * Vocals: The King's Men.Running Time: 7 min. 38 sec. (un-edited)

Home video releases
DVD
 * Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities
 * Disney's American Legends

Trivia

 * The scene where Casey is rushing through a tunnel at the end, is mimicked in A Cowboy Needs A Horse, another Disney Cartoon.
 * Casey's train is featured in the short Out of Scale as the model train Donald Duck rides in his train set.
 * The end of the scene where Casey is leaving the railyard in a hurry, is mimicked in How to be a Detective, a Goofy Disney Cartoon.
 * When the conductor runs up to the engine to tell Casey about the double-headed slow freight train, he fails to get the message through, and jumps off the train, and then in wide shot is shown still standing there on the engine's roof.
 * The word "Egad!" is said multiple times throughout the short: when the train leaves the depot, when the rain has made him eight hours late, when Casey sees the damsel in distress, when he realizes something, when the train robbing bandits put him behind schedule, when another train is slowly approaching Casey, when an elder engineer sees Casey's train up ahead, when he blows the whistle in shock, when the brake-man fails to make Casey notice the other train, and finally when the two trains collide into each other.