Along with running this site, my other passion is stamp collecting. I was perusing an old issue of "The American Philatelist" (April 2015) and reading about a United States postage stamp honoring Casey Jones where the author makes the following statement:

At the same time, the recently made Walt Disney cartoon The Brave Engineer, based on the Ballad of Casey Jones, was being shown in cinemas throughout Tennessee and Mississippi. It compounded the myth by taking further liberties with events and people, including a happy ending with Casey emerging heroically and undamaged from the wreck. The film also left out Jones’ real life friend, fireman Sim Webb, and its portrayal of Casey’s wife also was less than generous. The film has since been edited to make it correspond more to reality.

This is the first I'd ever heard of there ever being any controversy surrounding this cartoon or hints that it was ever edited. Does anyone else have any information that would shed light on this?

I had no idea that The Brave Engineer was edited......nor have I seen it, for that matter.

For my birthday, one of my aunts got me the Disney Rarities DVD, although it hasn't arrived yet; up until then, the only two things I could clarify were edited out were the original title sequence (of course the "cards" on the screenshots aren't original, there's no RKO references on them) and, according to the database, "a scene featuring train robbers brandishing guns and knives" (could this have been a later television edit?).

according to the database, "a scene featuring train robbers brandishing guns and knives" (could this have been a later television edit?).

Yes, back when I was doing the DisneyShorts site, we verified that this was a TV edit back when they were cutting out any guns, smoking and etc. The edits the author is talking about would probably have been done back in the late 50's when the short was originally shown.

According to this thread about Disney reissues from the old forum , The Brave Engineer was reissued in 1963. Could the print we usually see (with the RKO Radio Pictures references removed from the credits and the body of the short itself supposedly edited to "make it correspond more with reality") be derived from this reissue?

I (just now) watched The Brave Engineer in its entirety.

I can confirm that with the exception of the original opening credits, there seems to be nothing cut out or edited (I could try to explain what wasn't present in this adaptation, but the original post summed it up pitch-perfectly).