Right, Joe. I was wondering if someone would come up with "Train that Never ..." before 1927.
Norm Cohen has a fairly thorough discussion of these songs, and of those he puts into "The Train that Never Returned" (II,) he says the earliest was published in 1927, but with no date of first occurrence. Cohen says "we cannot be sure that version II predates the "Wreck of the Old '97."

I was trying to find if any material filled in the gap, since some 25 years have gone by since Cohen published "Long Steel Rail.".