The Brave Locomotive

The Brave Locomotive is a 2023 American independent animated short film by Academy Award-nominated Disney animator Andrew Chesworth.

Summary

A love letter to the Andrews Sisters and 1940s Disney animation shows the story about Linus, a mighty little 2-4-0 English-American Locomotive built in the 1850s with a big heart, and his jovial salt of the earth steam engineer Henry McCloud, in the mountains of Colorado's Old West in 1895. An eastern railroad baron named Baron Von Kapital buys out Linus' tiny railroad merged into Von Capital Railroad Limited Pacific, and Henry receives a lofty promotion to drive Linus’ replacement, Samson the powerful 4-8-4 Locomotive, while Linus ends up working at a mountain logging forestry railroad with other scrapped old steam engines. There he is forced to haul flatcars of logs while Samson, with his strength, speed and technological advantages, builds the railroad up into a new humongous railroad and expands the economy of Colonnaville. When Samson’s continuous high speed transiting accidentally breaks the supports of the wooden bridge spanding the Colonnaville River Canyon leaves him on the verge of falling off. Now Samson and his passengers is in danger, Henry blows the whistle for help. Linus hears Samson's whistle blowing, notices the major trouble and escapes by breaking his chains, leaving the log cars behind for the forestry railroad engineer to land in the chimney of the Angler Steam Engine, who looks up, grins, and takes him away in the pitch dark mine tunnel, presumably planning to murder him or imprison him deep in the mines. As Linus rushes to the rescue, the forestry railroad owner shoots his steam dome with a gun to damage him which starts leaking water. Reaching the broken bridge, Linus spins round and couples up to Samson's passenger coaches and pulls, causing Samson's tender to come loose while Linus pulls Samson's coaches and tender free. Turning, Linus spies Samson about to fall with the Baron, his daughter Katrina Von Kapital and Henry, and quickly couples to Samson the Super Locomotive and pulls as hard as he can. With the Baron, Katrina, and Henry in Linus’ cab, he gives Henry and Katrina shovels to give him a lot of coal in the firebox to gain lots of steam pressure and pull Samson as the bridge starts breaking apart, and ultimately, even with his own boiler busting into flames, Linus manages to get Samson to safety, but crashes with a large fiery explosion in the process. Everyone looking very sad sees Linus in a sorry destructive state, and just as Linus sadly floats up to train heaven, they fully restore him and bring him to good operating condition again. Time passes 50 years later into 1945 and the bridge is fixed as Linus is now a 2-6-0 English-American Locomotive. The bridge had steel and concrete design, good as new and with his old job back as a Trailway Train Tours carrying tourists while the modern 1930s trains on long distance runs (with a news article having revealed a grateful Samson accepted a new job of hauling lumber), continues working with now elderly the Henry and his wife Scarlet McCloud operating him together.

Production

Chesworth formerly worked at Disney (being animator on Wreck It Ralph, Frozen, Get a Horse!, Big Hero 6, Feast, Zootopia and Moana) and Netflix (on the 2019 Annie Award for Best Animated Feature winner Klaus) while working independently on his passion projects including The Brave Locomotive (first conceived in 2008; he released online in 2015 the opening sequence that was in progress before shelving it after being hired by Disney in 2011).

Release

It was released to film festivals for Oscar qualification before airing on YouTube.

Accolades

• The Brave Locomotive - LA Shorts Film Festival: Best Animation (won)

See also

The following Disney animated films featuring the aforementioned Andrews Sisters:

• Make Mine Music (1946)
• Melody Time (1948)

External links

• The Brave Locomotive on Chesworth's official YouTube channel
• The Brave Locomotive on IMDb