The Brave Engineer

The cartoon opens to a railroad yard where "all the trains are fast asleep." The sun rises, and engineer Casey Jones wakes from his slumber in the cab of his engine, No. 2, an American Standard 4-4-0 tender engine that is hauling a small, yet valuable train known as the Western Mail. His train begins the journey and Casey is intent on making his schedule at all costs.

Casey is confronted by a variety of obstacles along the way. He has to paddle his train through flooded wetlands, stop for a cow crossing the tracks, and save a woman who was tied up on the tracks by a stereotypical villain character. Another villain destroys a span of tracks on a trestle, and as Casey has to get the Western Mail across a gorge without those tracks, his train heads on into a dry desert canyon. He fights off a group of criminals, who climb onto the cab of his engine in an attempt to rob the train.

To make up for lost time, Casey runs his engine well past it's mechanical limits, plowing through two tunnels (One which exploded & the last one didn't), passing a five mile sign causing it & the tracks to melt. While focusing completely on repairing the engine, he drives the Western Mail at full speed down a hill on a collision course with another train, which is a double-headed slow freight train with No. 77 and No. 5, two American Mastodon 4-8-0 tender engines, pulling it. The conductor sees the other train, runs up, and attempts to warn Casey about the oncoming train, but fails to get the message. He jumps off the train when Casey doesn't notice it until it is too late and the two trains to collide with a large explosion. The conductor and other railroad employees (the freight train engineers and firemen) are able to jump clear of the crash. The station porter's initial disappointment of thinking the train won't arrive is quickly dispelled as Casey arrives, with the remains of his engine, almost on time.

• The shorts depicts the accident as a head-on collision in an Ozark-like mountain range near Reno, Wyoming. In real life, Jones' train struck the back of a train that had stopped near Vaughan due to a broken air brake line.
• The accident takes place in broad daylight and clear conditions in the short. The real accident occurred at night during a rainstorm.
• The short ends with Casey looking mildly injured after the wreck, but very much alive. In real life, Jones was fatally injured, and did not survive the accident.
• Casey operates his engine single-handedly in the short. In real life, Jones was assisted by an African American fireman named Sim Webb.
• The engine in the short (No.2) is an American Standard 4-4-0 tender engine taking the Western Mail, (Possibly resembling Central Pacific #173). Jones' real engine was a 4-6-0 "Ten Wheeler" engine No. 382, which was repaired following the wreck, and later scrapped in 1935.
• The railroad, that Casey and his engine ran through Fort Reno to Frisco, may have possibly The First transcontinental railroad, that is not the Illinois Central Railroad like the real life counterpart worked on.

The short was released on December 6, 2005 on Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities - Celebrated Shorts: 1920s–1960s.[6]

Additional releases include:

• 2001 Disney's American Legends[7]

• Make Mine Music - The 1946 package feature that featured "Casey at the Bat" which similar design and madcap comedic pace
• John Luther "Casey" Jones
• Casey Jones - Also a loose adaptation of the legend with Alan Hale as Casey

• The Brave Engineer @ Big Cartoon Database
• The Brave Engineer at IMDb
• Walt Disney's Story Of The Brave Engineer (Casey Jones) RCA Victor Records (Audiobook) on Internet Archive and YouTube
• D23 entry