Nine killed including Engineer Joseph A. Broady. Near Danville (across from North Danville), just before Stillhouse Trestle. Southern Railway, on the mail run between Washington and Atlanta. The song is fairly accurate, as pointed out before. Broady had transferred from the Norfolk and Western a month before, and was unfamiliar with the route. Highballing, the locomotive and five wooden cars all plunged into the ravine.
See Norm Cohen, "Long Steel Rail," University Illinois Press, for the story and versions of the song.