Sandy Mc Lean, that's a great article!! I appreciate you posting a link to it.

Here's a brief excerpt of that article:

"When I was growing up, I listened repeatedly to several train-wreck records that my parents had bought before I was born. My two favorites were Old 97 and Number 9, both because of their wonderful tunes. I didn't discover until reading the Scalded book that Number 9 was fictional, a song made up by a professional hillbilly singer named Carson Robison, following tried-and-true formulas. He admitted that it was based on no actual train wreck".

-snip-

The writer reference is to Katie Letcher Lyle's book Scalded to Death by the Steam (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1991) which "is all about train wrecks that have become the subject of songs".