- “All aboard! Let's go!”
- ―Casey Junior[src]
Casey Junior is a minor character in Disney's 1941 animated feature film Dumbo and the main character of his segment in The Reluctant Dragon. He is a young, anthropomorphic steam locomotive and his name is a direct reference to Casey Jones, the famous railroad engineer who had lost his life in a train collision in 1900.
Background[]
Development[]
Casey Junior is a 2-4-0 American steam tender locomotive hauling the WDP Circus train, and he even has his own theme song and appears frequently throughout the film. He is shown to be somewhat sentient and speaks through his whistle. For example, when the Ringmaster calls, "All aboard! All aboard!", he says in response, "All aboard! Let's go!"
As is the case with most of Disney's early cartoon vehicles, Casey has the ability to move more fluidly than real-life locomotives, and his boiler is often seen bending and twisting like rubber when in motion. In addition, he can twist and flex his metal body to express motion. He uses his steam cylinders like limbs, giving him the ability to shrug, point and make other gestures.
While the sound of the voice resembles that of one processed through a vocoder, it was actually done with a more primitive device, a Sonovox, which uses one or two small loudspeakers in contact with the throat, which allowed Margaret Wright, the 'voice actor', to "speak" by modulating an artificially produced sound with her mouth.
Physical appearance[]
Casey is a 2-4-0 American steam tender locomotive with a small, four-wheeled tender full of coal at the back, a big, tall smokestack, a small headlamp in an engineer's cap-shaped casing, a tall steam dome with a whistle on top, and a small cowcatcher on his front. The latter has a vague shape of a face, with two headlights in place of eyes and a cylinder-shaped structure protruding forward functioning as his nose. His wheel pistons are often used as "arms", like when he has to climb up a difficult mountain.
Appearances[]
Dumbo[]
At the beginning of the film, the circus workers get all the animals ready on Casey's circus train, including Mrs. Jumbo. After all the animals successfully board the circus cars, the Ringmaster then shouts "All aboard" so that Casey can get ready to travel to the spot where the circus will perform. Although anxious to get started at first, Casey travels across the American countryside from the Winter Headquarters very bravely. Meanwhile, Mr. Stork arrives late and flies towards Casey Junior, where Mrs. Jumbo is waiting in the Elephant car as he delivers her a newborn baby elephant named "Jumbo Junior" by his mother, whom the elephants made fun of his ears and call him "Dumbo". Later that stormy night, Casey climbs up and down a hill and makes it to town. After a long ride, he stops at the station where the circus will be built at for the next day. He hits the brakes so hard that the cars he is hauling bump into one another and bounce the animals around, waking them up for work. Moments later, Casey starts to rest in for the night and the workers and animals begin setting up the circus tent.
Later in the film, after Dumbo was unable to reach the top of the pyramid of elephants in the act, due to the tent collapsing, Casey travels sadly throughout a rainy night whistling a sad melody as the elephants exclude Dumbo from their act and he is put into the clown act.
At the end of the film where Dumbo becomes a circus star, a happy Casey is seen wearing a wreath of flowers around him, smiling with joy. He is also pulling another car, a private car for Dumbo. While the Crows and Elephants are singing a reprise of "When I See an Elephant Fly", Casey's steam whistle is heard adding to the harmonization of the song. Dumbo happily reunites with his mother and as Casey happily travels to the next destination, the crows bid a farewell to Dumbo, wishing him good luck.
The Reluctant Dragon[]
In this live-action/animated tour of the Walt Disney Studios in 1941, a work-in-progress scene of Casey is used to demonstrate the creation of sound effects for animation as well as the vocoder device used to create his voice. This demonstration not only marks the character's on screen debut, as Dumbo wasn't released until that October, but also takes the form of an extended train journey, though it is hard to say whether this was truly a deleted scene from an early version of Dumbo or simply new animation created for the purposes of the demonstration.
In this scene, Casey was, in fact, pulling a passenger train to Cleveland, Ohio. At one point during the excursion, he gets into conflict with a steamboat over the right of way on a drawbridge that spans the river, before overcoming him and causing the drawbridge to close on and push down on the steamboat into the water and comes up again coughing up all the water in him. Later on, Casey encounters a streamlined train charging towards him and closing in fast, at which he desperately called for a nearby railroad switch lever to wake up and change the track, which it did. He thereafter crashes after an effort to jump the chasm left by a broken bridge in a storm.
Casey's design in this film differs from his prior appearance in Dumbo and thus features many changes. For starters, coupling rods were connected to his foremost driving axle. He also had a roof-mounted bell and was not as stubby. When he was hired for the circus train, he had a few changes: his coupling rods were extended and moved to his rear driving wheels, his bell was removed, and he became stubbier. This implies that he was overhauled after the accident and bought by a railroad based in Florida that served the southeastern United States.
Other appearances[]
In 1955, 14 years after both of his feature film appearances, Walt Disney himself wrote and published a book based on Casey called "The Story of Casey Jr.", this takes place after the events of his Reluctant Dragon appearance and before the events of Dumbo, where Casey, now with a "For Sale" sign on him, got bought by the circus and started working for them, with them taking the mick out of Casey, much like the elephant that would come later, but, not because of his ears (as Casey doesn't have them, duh), but due to his small size, with a rabbit who though Casey was a bee telling him to go back to the toy shop he came from, which hurt Casey's feelings, even saving them from certain death after jumping over a bridge in a experience that, to him, was like what led to his crash in his debut in The Reluctant Dragon, but, this time, he survived, made it across and saved everyone, gaining the respect he wanted
Casey makes a cameo in the Donald Duck cartoon Spare the Rod as a silhouetted train crossing a bridge.
Casey makes a brief cameo in the 1988 film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He appears during the final scene.
In Kronk's New Groove, the 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 makes two cameo appearances in the Mickey Mouse TV shorts. In the episode Tokyo Go, he appears at the end of the episode 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). Casey also appears in the episode "New Shoes", with his namesake, Casey Jones, engineering, riding with Dumbo, Timothy Q. Mouse, and the Crows.
Casey makes a cameo at the beginning of the 2016 live-action remake of The Jungle Book during its opening Disney logo (recreated using traditional animation instead of CGI, thus 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. This is the same logo used for the 2019 remake of The Lion King; however, unlike in The Jungle Book, the logo does not back into a jungle and instead fades away. Coincidentally, both films are live-action remakes directed by Jon Favreau.
A non-anthropomorphic Casey also appeared in the 2019 live-action remake of Dumbo.
In the Me & Mickey episode "Mickey's Train", Casey appears as the miniature train piloted by Mickey. But Casey had one eye, his steam dome does not have the whistle on top, and he's hauling a blue open-top chair car, and a caboose which were the two same cars that Casey hauls on the Casey Jr. Circus Train ride. In "Halloween Train Ride", Casey retains the same appearance but in Halloween colors.
Video games[]
Casey appears in the video game Mickey's Racing Adventure as the train which brings the characters to their racing grounds. In the game, Casey is not anthropomorphic but he maintains the same name and appearance he had in Dumbo.
Casey makes a brief cameo in Where's My Mickey?
Casey appears in Disney Emoji Blitz as an unplayable character during the Dumbo Team Event.
Casey appears in Kinect: Disneyland Adventures as part of the Casey Jr. Circus Train which is one of the attractions that's not featured in the game.
Disney Parks[]
A Disneyland attraction named the Casey Jr. Circus Train is based on Casey, with a kids roller coaster version running at Disneyland Paris. Casey Jr. Splash & Soak Station, a water play area themed around him, was added to the Magic Kingdom in 2012 in the Storybook Circus section of the park's new Fantasyland.
Casey is the lead float (second prior to 2017) in the Main Street Electrical Parade. He, driven by Goofy, pulls a drum with the parade logo, along with Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Despite Casey being painted blackish blue in the original film, he has instead been painted a bright blue in most other material, including the theme parks and in the live-action remake, this may of been possibly due to the many factors regarding race at the Walt Disney Company.
- In the original film, Casey's eyes have visible pupils only in two scenes: when his whistle calls "all aboard" and in the final scene, which is also the only time he also has a mouth. (The latter depiction of him can also be seen in the early trailers for Dumbo, albeit without the decorations around his smokebox).
- The wagons that transport P.T. Flea's Circus in A Bug's Life are old boxes of Casey Jr. cookies.
- A lunchbox version of the box with the words "Casey Jr. Cookies" can be seen in Toy Story 4 at the Second Chance Antiques.
- In the film, Casey does not appear to have an engineer or fireman in his cab, although, there is deleted artwork of Casey's engineer, which was based on his animator Ward Kimball. which ultimately went unused, so it is unknown how he is able to move on his own in the first place unless he is a sentient being.
- 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 which the titular anthropomorphic engine chants these same words. In addition, Casey's cab and firebox have their colors briefly inverted.
- The "Casey Junior" segment in Dumbo was possibly much longer during the film's production. Not counting the segment featuring Casey in The Reluctant Dragon, concept artwork showed a possible deleted scene where he stops to drink water near a waterfall.
- 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. Though, this is most likely due to some animation errors.
- The train Casey pulls in the film, from front to back, is made up of a yellow coach (carrying the jugglers, clowns and acrobats), 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 the 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 the hyenas, apes, bears, lions, and tigers), a yellow-green stock car (carrying the ostriches, seals, hippos, and kangaroos), a green coach (carrying the circus workmen), and a red caboose (carrying the ringmaster). Also, at the end of the film, the caboose is replaced with a silver coach reserved for Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo.
- In Dumbo, Casey is a 2-4-0 steam engine, most likely to be of an American design, and numbered "8" on the Illinois Central Railroad and "1" on his own railroad, but in the 2019 live-action film Dumbo, Casey appears as a 4-4-0 American type steam engine, and numbered "41".
- The number 41 on his numberboard is the reference to the year of the original animated version of "Dumbo" which was released in 1941.
- In the live-action remake, Casey also has an engineer and fireman with him, and is a wood-burning steam engine. His tender is lettered Medici Brothers' Circus but later relettered to Medici Family Circus. He is also a non-speaking character and a non-anthropomorphic train, but does have an inanimate face.
- The color schemes that Casey is wearing in the live-action remake is the same one that he wears in the original version's first release poster and at the Disney parks, and spinoff media.
- Casey strongly resembles a engine, that was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1900 for the Old Sydney Colliery Company. It (numbered 25) worked at the Sydney, Nota-Scotia colliery until the early 1960s. It is currently on display at Delson, Quebec, Canada today. He also bears a considerable amount of resemblance to the Virginia & Truckee's #21 engine "J.W. Bowker", and even more so to the Denver & Rio Grande #1 "Montezuma" (despite the latter being 3-foot narrow gauge, it had a 4-wheel tender much like Casey's). As a matter of fact, animator Ward Kimball owned an 1881 Baldwin Mogul 2-6-0 steam engine, which he ran on the Grizzly Flats Railroad. Casey is based on that particular engine.
- In the live-action remake, Casey is based on a Pennsylvania Railroad Class D6 that was built by the PRR's Altoona Works between 1881–1883 for the Pennsylvania Railroad, but with a diamond stack, a shorter 6 wheeled tender, lamps, and metal bars on the smokebox that resemble a face, the whistle is placed on top of the steam dome, and no running board.
- Casey's sound was reused for the dishes from The Sword in the Stone, during which Sir Ector pushes them aside violently.
- In some early book adaptations (including the 1955 book by Dick Kelsey), the train is actually named "Casey Jones".
- In the original book version of Dumbo, Casey Junior was just simply called “the circus train” and had no physical illustration.
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