Western Animation / The Brave Locomotive

”In the mountains way out west, chugs a mighty little train!”

''The Brave Locomotive'' is an 2023 indie musical animated short film, which is directed and written by Andrew Chesworth, produced by Scott Bowman, and scored by Tom Hambleton.

Set in 1895, the film centers on Linus, a little blue passenger train's locomotive, and his friend, a driver named Henry, as they go through the grueling process of obsolescence, and struggle to preserve their little western town after Linus gets replaced by a much larger locomotive named Samson.

The film was originally conceived in 2008, but after 2011, progress went into a standstill, and the only footage of the film that was ever seen was a work-in-progress version of the opening, with an earlier version of the soundtrack, animation, etc. During the COVID-19 pandemic, progress picked up, and Chesworth set up a Patreon to help fund the film, and eventually, the film’s goal was reached, and ran a film festival circuit in 2023. The short film was released on YouTube on November 13th, 2023. It can be watched here.

The Brave Locomotive contains examples of:

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Combines CGI for the trains with traditional hand-drawn animation for all the other characters. Linus himself is a combination of the two, with a hand-drawn face on a CG body.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: In an “act of god” as a newspaper calls it, Linus somehow manages to willingly derail himself off of the tracks and truck down to the stranded Samson on the bridge. While he does save the oversized locomotive, Linus temporarily dies in the process.
• The Atoner: The second newspaper tells us that after the accident at the Colonna Canyon Bridge, Samson took on Linus' job of hauling lumber to help repair the damage he inadvertently caused and that he was grateful for Linus saving the lives of his passengers and himself.
• Back from the Dead: Linus suffers a catastrophic boiler explosion that kills him after he narrowly saves Samson and his train, but Katrina Von Kapital is able to rebuild him.
• Badass in Distress: Samson after the bridge started to collapse.
• Benevolent Boss: Aside from the reassignment of Linus, Baron Von Kapital is hinted to be this. He wants his best driver, Henry McCloud, to drive his company's newest locomotive, Samson. And following the accident at the Colonna Canyon Trestle Bridge, he gives Linus and Henry their old job back of delivering passengers on a branch line away from the Canyon while the main line bridge is rebuilt.
• Big Damn Heroes: A little damn hero, but after hearing a distressed train whistle, Linus races to the bridge and saves the train. While Linus doesn’t survive, his death is only temporary.
• Brawn Hilda: Henry's wife, Scarlet McCloud. Also a background muscular, yet feminine female in pink.
• Cigar Chomper: Samson is this, shown in a newspaper that as part of train maintenance, he has a crew assigned to give him a new cigar and to light it for him.
• Cool Train:
  • Linus, the main locomotive, is pretty strong for a small 2-4-0, and is capable of climbing extreme gradients without the need for sanding gear.
  • Samson is Baron Von Kapital's newest steam locomotive, a 4-8-4 built long before the concept had even been thought up elsewhere. He even has an auto-stoker, which keeps his fire going without the need for a crewman to constantly shovel coal through the cab.
• Didn't Think This Through: Although Baron Von Kapital and Samson were able to deliver passengers to their destination in Colonnaville on time, they forgot about the wooden trestle bridge built over Colonna Canyon that was getting fatigued every time Samson thundered over it. Having learned their lesson in the climax, Von Kapital's company later replaces the broken trestle with a concrete viaduct bridge.
• Disneyesque: The short and its characters are designed in a very Disney-like manner, with Linus borrowing a lot of obvious influences from Dumbo star Casey Jr. It's musical accompaniment is backed up with a chorus in an homage to The Andrews Sisters not unlike Melody Time's "Toot The Little Tug Boat" short, and the town is named after Jerry Colonna, who narrated The Brave Engineer in addition to a variety of other Disney shorts.
• The Dog Bites Back: After enduring enough abuse from the fat lumberyard driver, Linus breaks his chains. The chains then hit the fat bastard who ends up landing in the balloon stack of a sinister old dark locomotive. Said sinister locomotive takes the fat guy inside the tunnel.
• Double-Meaning Title: Katrina Von Kapitals' nickname given to her in the newspapers as "The Railroad Princess" is this: due to the fact that her family are among the Nouveau Riche and her father is a Railroad Baron in the first half of the film; however in the second half, she is shown to be much more than just a pretty face meant to inherit her father's company as she immediately went to work alongside Henry McCloud and Linus in saving Samson and his passengers from danger over Colonna Canyon.
• Dungeon Bypass: To show Samson's sheer power, when he comes to the same steep grade Linus climbed earlier, he instead bores right through the side of the hill. This metaphorically alludes to the fact that tunnels had to be dug eventually to allow longer, heavier trains to get around better.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: After spending most of the time being away from Henry and saving Samson, Linus was rebuilt afterwards and got to do passenger runs again.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Not exactly an evil person, but Baron Von Kapital was sad after Linus exploded following the latter's Heroic Sacrifice.
• Expy: Linus is one of both Thomas the Tank Engine and Tillie. He has the former's job of hauling passengers on his own branch line (after he saves everyone from falling off the broken bridge), possesses some British-influenced design aspects (his cab has circular windows at the front and his whistle is mounted in the center like Thomas's), and his cars are anthropomorphic, while he has a similar color scheme and Determinator attitude like the latter. Design-wise, he resembles Casey Jr., being a 2-4-0 and having a headlamp shaped like a baseball cap.
• Face of a Thug: Samson. He's only just doing his job carrying passengers, and holds no ill feelings for Linus when the two are first introduced.
• Falling into the Cockpit: After literally landing inside of Linus's cab, Katrina Von Kapital immediately grabs one of the shovels with Henry and begins shoveling coal into Linus's firebox in order to build up enough boiler pressure to pull himself, the three people in him, and Samson away from the collapsing trestle bridge behind them even when the track is practically running against the canyon wall.
• Fat Bastard: The fat worker at the forestry railway embodies this as he delights in whipping the locomotives he's commanding. He clearly knows nothing about maintenance or care, if the hulks of dead locomotives are anything to go by.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When Samson is crossing the wooden trestle bridge, you can see some of the planks are about to fall off. Samson looks at the bridge briefly while heading towards the other end. The bridge starts to shake and collapse, leaving Samson horrified as he tries to reverse.
• Foreshadowing: After Linus is reassigned, he passes by a line of scrap locomotives, one of which had an exploded funnel and looked exactly like him, hinting at what would happen to him in the climax.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: Henry McCloud is shown to use a Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe, while Baron Von Kapital and Samson uses a Cigarette Holder and Cigar respectively.
• Help, I'm Stuck!: After the wooden trestle bridge began to fail, Samson frantically tried to reverse but it didn't do anything other than shake the bridge. With no way to get better traction like sanding gear, Henry had to use Samson's whistle to call for help.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Having been shot in the steam dome (and perhaps in the safety valve) as he rushes off to save Samson and the passengers, Linus gives it his all to get them off of the collapsing Colonna Canyon Bridge only to blow his dome off and then suffer a catastrophic boiler explosion after saving Samson.
• High-Class Glass: Baron Von Kapital sports one of these.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": As shown in a Freeze-Frame Bonus, the name of the Railroad Baron really is "Baron Von Kapital".
• Hope Spot: When Linus couples up to Samson's express and pulls, it looks like he successfully rescued everyone. But then he and the coaches look back. It turns out that Samson's tender coupling had snapped, leaving Samson, Henry, and the Von Kapitals stuck on a broken section of bridge and in peril.
• "I Can't Look!" Gesture: Baron Von Kapital was downright terrified when he, Henry, Samson, Katrina, and Linus were getting close to falling off the bridge. Fortunately, they all made it across the bridge to safety.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: The forestry railway overseer fires his revolver at Linus and manages to damage his steam dome at a range where a rifle would have to be used. In all fairness, Linus can't really dodge bullets.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Baron Von Kapital is technically right in that Samson should pull the train delivering passengers to Colonnaville, due to the fact that it takes an entire days' worth of travel for a 2-4-0 Engine like Linus to reach the Colonnaville Station to drop off a mere eight passengers before returning to the trainyard at sundown; and even then it's implied that Linus and Henry were the fastest of his company's other locomotives and drivers before Samson showed up.
• Job-Stealing Robot: Downplayed variation of this through Samson; where instead of Henry shoveling coal into Samson, Samson has an auto-stoker that sucks the coal into his firebox, leaving Henry with literally nothing more to do in Samson's unusually clean cab than just drink tea with Baron Von Kapital. Well, at least we know how Von Kapital brews his tea, considering the nearby firebox...
• Karma Houdini: The forestry railroad overseer is never punished for his mistreatment of locomotives, nor is he punished for shooting Linus when the latter abandons his forced job to save Samson and his passengers from falling off the collapsing bridge. It can be implied, however, that he won't be shooting engines much longer once Samson starts hauling lumber.
• Lean and Mean: The forestry railroad overseer, who is pretty thin and mistreats his locomotives, shooting them with his gun if they disobey his orders.
• Lightning Bruiser: Samson is ridiculously massive and capable of thundering his way across the railroad in record time. However, it's Deconstructed, as Von Kapital forgetting to upgrade the bridge along with his fleet nearly results in a devastating wreck that would have killed him and everyone else on board.
• Made a Slave: Linus being forced to work at a logging trainyard is treated as this. The new engineer is a cruel taskmaster who whips Linus to make him work harder, and there's a gunman (the overseer) standing by to shoot at Linus if he tries to escape.
• Memorial Statue: At the end of the film, it's shown that Baron Von Kapital had received one of these, and that he died at the ripe old age of 96.
• The Musical: The film is narrated through song as a homage to The Andrews Sisters.
• No Antagonist: Aside from the abusive Trainyard workers that Linus is assigned to, the other "Antagonists" of the film are rather circumstantial.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Samson is more realistically drawn than almost anything else in the short, to the point you could be forgiven for not noticing his more anthropomorphized features.
• Obviously Evil: The abusive men running the forestry railroad clearly care nothing for the locomotives they've employed and work them to death.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Henry and Linus when they saw a tortoise on the line. They were able to stop and let him pass.
  • A few track gang workers flee in panic just before Samson plows through a hill.
  • Samson's reaction to the wooden Colonna Canyon bridge breaking under him. The engine was very terrified and lost his cigar as well. Henry and Baron Von Kapital also freak out for a few seconds, before Henry starts yanking Samson's whistle chain.
  • Linus, upon realizing that Samson's tender coupling broke. He freaks out even more upon derailing himself just to get to Samson.
• Older Is Better: Linus is very much an old western locomotive in the vein of late 19th-century wood-burning locomotives (although he burns coal rather than wood, and he was built with a few British design features) that comes to save the lives of the larger, more modern Samson and his passengers.
• Overly Long Gag: Samson's trips to and from Colonnaville at breakneck speed don't have him stop at the train station at all. After the initial bunch of passengers were deposited, more and more people appear in haphazard fashion every time Samson rolls by. As it were, all the passengers aside from Katrina Von Kapital were tossed off the coaches.
• Pet the Dog: Despite reassigning Linus to lesser duties in favor of Samson, Von Kapital makes Henry the driver of his newest locomotive without hesitation owing to Henry's experience on his route. The Baron even stays in the cab for the duration of the trial runs as a form of moral support, if one could call it that.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Linus rescues a heavy passenger train and Samson from falling off the wooden bridge. This comes at the cost of him suffering a boiler explosion.
• Railroad Baron: Baron Von Kapital, owner of the railroad, presents Henry with a larger locomotive named Samson, which becomes a focal point of the film.
• Railroad Tracks of Doom: In the opening sequence, Linus nearly hits a tortoise, but hits his brakes just in time, letting it crawl off the tracks. However, this is played straight in Samson’s musical number, as the roaring express train smashes into the tortoise. Thankfully in the end, the fragile little tortoise is safe and healthy, and is seen riding on Linus’s cowcatcher in the ending sequence.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Baron Von Kapital is shown to be this. Having been saved by Linus, he and his daughter contribute money and materials to rebuild the small engine. Von Kapital admits his mistake of not upgrading the Trestle Bridge over Colonna Canyon in favor of upgrading the town of Colonnaville and later reinstates Linus and Henry to their own branch line to resume service carrying passengers there. There's a good reason why there's a commemorative statue on that branch line.
• Red Is Heroic: Katrina Von Kapital is shown to be this, having traveled across the rooftop of the passenger cars to reach Samson when the Colonna Canyon Bridge was given out in order to save him, Henry and her father. After landing inside of Linus she immediately grabs a shovel to help Henry McCloud put coal into Linus's firebox to get them all to safety and later helps out in rebuilding Linus after his accident.
• Retraux: Done in the style of a 1940s Disney cartoon, with a big band-inspired musical score.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: While technically not Royalty in the traditional sense of the word, Katrina Von Kapital, "The Railroad Princess" is more than just a pretty face meant to inherit her father's company: showing a sense of bravery and duty in the face of danger and a willingness to roll up her sleeves in order to get work done with others. Oh, and it turns out that Katrina's a true progressive by political ideology, having supported suffragette movements and racial equality movements.
• Save the Villain: Although Samson and Baron Von Kapital weren't true villains, Linus had to rescue them (along with Henry and the passengers) when the Colonna Canyon bridge was about to collapse.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: When Linus heard Henry was in trouble, he decided to break his chains and escape the abusive staff of the logging railroad to save the passenger train.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Linus's green coaches and caboose frantically roll out of the train station the moment Samson appears.
• Shout-Out:
  • The two vultures that leer at Linus as the latter passes the “point of no return” sign are an obvious callback to the vultures from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
  • Colonnaville and Colonna Canyon are named after entertainer Jerry Colonna, who narrated several Disney animated shorts including "The Brave Engineer".
  • One of the passengers, a woman in green, is from Andrew Chesworth's earlier animation "Wild West".
• Shown Their Work: Like in Back to the Future Part III, a steam locomotive is only able to handle so much pressure in the boiler before it violently begins to break apart, and an older locomotive like Linus is no exception. He pushes himself to his limits to try and save Samson and the rest of the stranded train, but despite succeeding, it proves to be too much, and his boiler explodes. Luckily, his frame was intact enough for a complete rebuild and upgrade.
• Smooch of Victory: After having saved Samson and his passengers and later being rebuilt, Katrina Von Kapital kisses Linus on his cheek. Bonus points for the fact that Katrina is called "The Railroad Princess" in the newspapers.
• Stereotype Flip: While Katrina Von Kapital seemed to appear as a Rich Bitch Socialite in the first half of the film, during the climax she is actually shown to be a far cry from her father. The newspapers refer to Katrina as "The Railroad Princess" for another good reason: her political activism.
• Technology Marches Oninvoked: As shown with Samson - who is a much more advanced 4-8-4 locomotive - and at the end of the film, airplanes are seen flying over the newly built Colonna Canyon bridge.
• Track Trouble: During Samson's final run over the Colonna Canyon bridge, several beams fall out, causing sections of track to break. Samson gets stuck and is unable to reverse off the bridge.
• Truth in Television: Smaller, obsolete steam locomotives like Linus really were often consigned to industrial railroads (such as those for logging and mining companies) for which they were drastically unsuited and usually poorly maintained. For example, the locomotives from the infamous Last Train to Nowhere in Alaska were originally designed for New York City's elevated train lines, as opposed to hauling raw materials in the tundra.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Bent on getting his new venture underway as soon as possible, Baron Von Kapital disregards concerns that the trestle bridge over Colonna Canyon cannot support the weight and hammering of the massive locomotive Samson for very long. This leads to the bridge collapsing in the climax, nearly causing the deaths of everyone aboard Samson's express.
• Vile Vulture: Two vultures pose on a “point of no return” sign that Linus passes.
• Villain Recruitment Song: Though Baron Von Kapital is more of a dangerously overeager businessman than a real villain, his intro song, "The Baron's Proposal," has a rather classically sinister edge to it as he goads Henry into replacing his friend Linus with the cold and menacing Samson.
• We Can Rebuild Him: Linus, following his Heroic Sacrifice. It's possible that Katrina also strengthened his boiler to handle higher steam pressure levels.
• Winged Soul Flies Off at Death: After Linus suffers a boiler explosion, he goes through a near-death experience that ends with him getting rebuilt.
• Women Are Wiser: Compared to her cowering father, Katrina Von Kapital leaped at the chance to shovel coal into Linus's firebox alongside Henry McCloud in order to save themselves and Samson from the slowly collapsing trestle bridge. Later on she is seen wearing coveralls having helped to rebuild Linus with the others.

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