Casey Junior is a fictional, anthropomorphic, young steam locomotive who is among the more memorable characters in the 1941 Disney animated feature film, Dumbo. He has also appeared in The Reluctant Dragon and Kronk's New Groove, as well as other Walt Disney media.
His name is a direct reference to Casey Jones, the famous railroad engineer who had lost his life in a train collision in 1900.
Personality
A circus locomotive hailing from Florida, Casey Jr is the wise-cracker of the True Blue Steam Team. As someone with plenty of experience on the rails, Casey Jr maintains a laid-back attitude with his fellow Crotoonians, though inner fears do peer out every now and then. He's a good friend to his fellow engines, and is never afraid to pay a big engine out for messing with his friends. Helpful, wisecracking, but self-aware, that's Casey Jr!
Basis
Casey Jr. is based on the Nevada Central No. 2, albeit with its 2-6-0 wheel arrangement replaced with a 2-4-0 wheel arrangement. This particular locomotive was owned by Disney animator, Ward Kimball, and his wife, Betty, for their backyard railroad called for the Grizzly Flats Railroad. It is now on static display at the Orange Empire Railway Museum.
Trivia
- Casey makes a cameo appearance in a Donald Duck cartoon Spare the Rod as a silhouetted train crossing a bridge.
- Casey is the second float in the Main Street Electrical Parade and its versions. He, driven by Goofy, pulls a drum with the parade logo and Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse.
- Casey makes a brief cameo in the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He is spotted during the final scene.
- The wagons that transport P.T. Flea's Circus in A Bug's Life are old boxes of Casey Jr. cookies.
- In the film Kronk's New Groove, a sequel to The Emperor's New Groove, Kronk has a miniature model train set of Casey in his new home, complete with scaled-down models of the carriages featured in Dumbo.
- Casey was named after John Luther "Casey" Jones, an engineer from the late 1800's who was famous for driving trains at great speeds (sometimes dangerous speeds) in order keep on schedule.
- In the film, Casey does not appear to have an engineer in his cab, so it's unknown of how he is able to move on his own in the first place, unless he is a sentient being.
- Casey makes a cameo appearance in theMickey Mouse episode "Tokyo Go". In the episode, Casey appears as a miniature train piloted by Mickey Mouse as a children's attraction, in reference to Walt Disney's backyard Carolwood Pacific Railroad, complete with Walt's barn. (A photo of Walt in the cab of Disneyland Railroad locomotive E. P. Ripley also appears in the scene.)
- When Casey climbs up the mountain, he chants, "I think I can," over and over again, and on the way down he chants repeatedly, "I thought I could." This is a direct reference to the classic children's book The Little Engine that Could. In addition, Casey's cab and firebox had their colors inverted.
- The "Casey Junior" segment was originally much longer. It was drawn and animated, then heavily edited, cutting several minutes from its run time. The full length segment can be seen on Disney's The Reluctant Dragon DVD.
- Casey's train, for some reason, seems to be constantly gaining and losing cars as he makes his journey; The only time he is ever seen with all of his cars intact is when he crosses a bridge before climbing up the mountain.
- The train Casey pulls in the film, from front to back, is made up of a yellow coach (carrying the clowns and other circus performers), a flatcar with a calliope organ and a various circus wagon, another flatcar (carrying two other various circus wagons), an orange stock car (carrying the elephants), a blue stock car (carrying animals like monkeys, horses, zebras, and camels), another flatcar (carrying the tent and its supports), a light blue stock car (carrying the giraffes (whose heads are clearly sticking through the roof)), one more flatcar (carrying two more wagons), a pink stock car (carrying predators like hyenas, apes, bears, lions, and tigers), a light green stock (carrying animals like ostriches, seals, hippos and kangaroos), a green coach (carrying the circus workmen), and a red caboose numbered 2 (carrying the ringmaster). Also, at the end of the film, the caboose is replaced with a silver coach reserved for Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo.
- Casey makes a cameo appearance in Where's My Mickey?
- In Dumbo, Casey is a 2-4-0 steam locomotive, most likely to be of an American design, and numbered "8" on the Illinois Central Railroad and "1" on his own railroad, but in real life, a Baldwin steam locomotive and numbered unknown variously on the Illinois Central Railroad and an unidentified number of other railroads.
- As a matter of fact, animator Ward Kimball owned an 1881 Baldwin Mogul 2-6-0 steam locomotive, which he ran on the Grizzly Flats Railroad. Casey is based on that particular locomotive.
- Casey Jr's Sound was reused for the dishes from The Sword and the Stones when Sir Ector pushing the dishes.
- Casey Jr. makes a cameo appearance at the very beginning of The Jungle Book (2016) during the film's opening Disney logo (recreated using traditional animation instead of CGI, replacing the realistic train from the original version of the current logo), where he is seen as a silhouetted train crossing a trestle over a river behind an amusement park just right before the castle is shown.
- Casey Jr. strongly resembles a locomotive that was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1900 for the Old Sydney Colliery Company. This locomotive (numbered 25) worked at the Sydney, Nota-Scotia colliery until the early 1960s. It's currently on display at Delson, Qeubec, Canada today.