Casey Jones is a character based on the tall tale of the same name, The Brave Engineer, that was released in 1950, and is now available on Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color (1954), The Mouse Factory (1972), Good Morning, Mickey! (1983), Walt Disney Cartoon Classics (1983), DTV: Rock, Rhythm & Blues (1984), American Folk Heroes (1985), Disney's Sing Along Songs (1986), Rootin' Tootin' Roundup (1990), Mickey's Mouse Tracks (1992), Donald's Quack Attack (1992), Sing Me A Story With Belle (1995), The Ink and Paint Club (1997), Disney's American Legends (2001), and Walt Disney Treasures (2001).[]
Story[]
The Brave Engineer[]
- In the train yard at dawn, Casey Jones is sleeping in the cabin of his engine, Johnny, an American Standard 4-4-0 engine (No. 2), and is wearing his robe, and sleeping cap. He gets changed in his engineer outfit getting ready to deliver the mail (of course, he's in a hurry while doing so). Once the car is finished loading, Casey starts up Johnny at a rather fast speed before the conductor could call all aboard. After going through a series of track switches, Casey Jones & Johnny barely makes it out of the train yard passing two other trains going opposite directions.
- Back in Johnny's cabin, he is seen cleaning the dust off of the coal, and putting it in the boiler one piece at a time. His peace is soon interrupted, however, when the train is covered in a flood caused by rain, which makes Casey "eight hours late." Paddling through the water, Casey climbs up on Johnny's roof, and helps him to paddle, but finally makes it out of the rain and back on the track after Johnny sneezes and shakes like a dog.
- However, just as the train resumes speeds, Casey spots a cow on the track and brings the train to a screeching halt. Casey replies "What now, brown cow?" as he complains to the cow that he is running late and orders the cow to shoo off the track. Once the cow leaves, the train resumes its fast speed and Casey checks his stop watch again, noticing time elapsed because of the cow problem. So Casey loads more coal from the engine's tender with his shovel into the furnace to make up for lost time.
- But once again, Casey Jones encounters yet another obstacle, this time a damsel in distress, tied up on the tracks by a crook with a handlebar mustache in front of Johnny. Not wanting to stop again after before, Casey runs up to the front of the engine, but stands on his cowcatcher, then saves the lady, just mere seconds in the moment in which the train is about to run over her. Still not stopping, Casey continues at a fast pace and drops the female off at the next station where a porter runs up and grabs her and thinks that she's a she-mail.
- Now with very little time than he thought, Casey speeds up Johnny & the train some more with more coal, now entering and later exiting a snowy plains area, into a dark canyon as if time seemingly flies by quicker than we think. Unknown to the engineer and Johnny, a mad man "who's not on the level" sets explosives on a bridge and just as Casey's train is about to cross, they detonate and send the whole train falling down. Once again, having been undaunted by a seeming impassable obstacle, Johnny doesn't give up, struggles to huff and puff up the other side of the mountain's gorge, and continues on his way once again.
- As the train heads on, a gang of train thugs lurk in the shadows, and watch the train from above, because they think that there is gold on that engine, so they charge down toward the train to attack Johnny and Casey. Still shoveling coal, Casey doesn’t notice that the robbers are now in the engine, guns drawn, until one is nearly shoveled into the furnace. Angered by this new interruption, Casey attacks the gang with his shovel. He continues to battle the bandits almost nonchalantly as he keeps on shoveling more coal into Johnny's furnace. He successfully beats the gang, but is alarmed to see how late he is when he looks at his watch, then opens the throttle so widely that he snaps it off its ribbing, looks at it, and throws it away.
- Desperate to make it on time, Casey shovels the coal into the furnace crazily, causing Johnny to overheat. After running out of coal, Casey throws anything he can into the furnace, still overheating until gears and gauges explode. As Johnny begins to fall apart, with Casey trying to hold him all together, the tracks melt & a seven mile sign while Casey gives his engine some repairs with the train seen roaring down a hill. While otherwise occupied, the brave engineer doesn’t notice another train pulled by Zeb & Zeek, a pair of 4-8-0 Mastodons No. 77 and 75 coming toward him on the same track. Zeb's engineer, driving him, and helping Zeek to pull their freight train over the mountain, sees Casey's train up ahead, and screams in fear, and blows the whistle to let the others know that Casey’s train is coming. Casey's train is heading toward the other train like a bullet, and the conductor of Casey’s train runs up toward the engine to warn Casey, but Casey can’t hear him, so the conductor jumps off the train, and is still seen on Johnny's roof in the next shot. The workers on the train, gasp, jump off their engines unharmed, and run for cover, but just as Casey notices, he just has time to gasp, before the two trains collide into each other with a large explosion and in a cloud of black smoke.
- The mailman waiting at the station thinks Casey is not going to make the stop today, when all of a sudden, the last remaining pieces of Johnny appear, with Casey Jones holding the mail. According to Casey’s watch, Casey made it “On Time…Almost.”
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- In the real wreck, Casey Jones does not survive; however, he is the only casualty in the crash, and has saved untold numbers of lives that day.
- In the cartoon wreck, when he is on a collision course with another train, Casey survives the wreck after some works on Zeb and Zeek, two 4-8-0 engines Nos. 77 and 5, two engines, with a freight train. Zeb and Zeek, however, are somewhat based off of Central pacific #229.
- The engine of Casey's train in the cartoon that he pilots is Johnny, an American 4-4-0 engine or an American type steam locomotive, No. 2, with a mail car, and caboose No. 53.
- Johnny and other engines of this most common wheel arrangement were used most common on American railroads, during the 1800's and 1830's until 1928, and were given the name "American" in 1872, because of how they did all the work on every railroad in the United States. Johnny however, is most likely based off of Central pacific #173, a real life 4-4-0 locomotive that was nicknamed Sonoma. The locomotive itself even served as the basis for Disneyland railroad CK Holiday & Carolwood pacific Lily Belle.
- In reality, since his real engine on his fateful trip, was a 4-6-0 Ten Wheeler locomotive numbered 382, a replica of that type of engine is currently on display at the Casey Jones Home & Railroad Museum in Jackson, Tennessee.
- These types of engines, in which about 25,000 in total were built, have eight wheels (four leading wheels, four driving wheels, and no trailing wheels)
- Johnny also appears in Out of Scale (1951) on Donald Duck's model train set.