The late 1800s through the early 1900s were a bad time to travel by rail. We have highlighted many train accidents in the past, but it’s not often that a train wreck actually becomes a popular musical ballad. On September 27, 1903, a Southern Railway mail train, train number 97, and also known as the Fast Mail, chugged down the tracks from Monroe, Virginia, to Spencer, North Carolina. The train was traveling at excessive speed because it was an hour behind schedule, but the Old 97 always made it on time.
The route the train traveled was known to be dangerous with a combination of grades and tight curves. Signs were posted along the way to warn engineers to slow down, but due to a steep grade that ended at the 45-foot-high Stillhouse Trestle spanning Stillhouse Branch, the train could not slow. As it approached the curve leading to the trestle, it careened off the side of the bridge, plunging into the ravine below, killing 11 people on board.
Less than a month before, on September 3, 1903, another Southern Railway mail and express train wrecked near York, South Carolina, and present-day Highway 161, when the Fishing Creek trestle collapsed, killing five.
Written By John G. Clark Jr.
