to the trestle at a speed of more than . Several eyewitnesses to the wreck, however, stated that the speed was probably around . In all likelihood, the railroad was at least partially to blame, as it had a lucrative contract with the U.S. Post Office to haul mail, and the contract included a penalty clause for each minute the train was late into Spencer. It is probably safe to conclude that the engineers piloting the Fast Mail were always under pressure to stay on time so that the railroad would not be penalized for late mail delivery. The Fast Mail was in another fatal accident earlier in the year of 1903. On Monday, April 13, the train left Washington at 8:00 am, en route to New Orleans. As the train approached Lexington, North Carolina, it collided with a boulder on the track, causing the train to derail and ditch, killing the engineer and fireman. The locomotive that was pulling the train is unknown. Southern #1102 had yet to be delivered to the railroad at that time. Ballad The disaster inspired several songs, the most famous being the ballad first recorded commercially by Virginia musicians G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter. Vernon Dalhart's version was released in 1924 (Victor Record no. 19427), sometimes cited as the first million-selling country music release in the American record industry, with Frank Ferera playing guitar and Dalhart playing harmonica. Since then, "Wreck of the Old 97" has been recorded by numerous artists, including Dalhart himself in 1924 under the name Sid Turner on Perfect 12147, The Statler Brothers (feat. Johnny Cash), Charlie Louvin of The Louvin Brothers, Flatt and Scruggs, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Johnny Cash, Hank Snow, Hank Williams III, Patrick Sky, Nine Pound Hammer, Roy Acuff, Boxcar Willie, Lonnie Donegan, The Seekers, Ernest Stoneman & Kahle Brewer, Carolyn Hester, Hank Thompson, John Mellencamp, Pink Anderson, Lowgold, Chuck Ragan, and David Holt. The music was often accompanied by a banjo and a fiddle, while the lyrics were either sung, crooned, yodeled, whistled, hummed, recited, or chanted. The song rivaled that of "Casey Jones" for being the number one railroading song of all time. The ballad was sung to the tune of "The Ship That Never Returned", written by Henry Clay Work in 1865. Originally, the lyrics were attributed to Fred Jackson Lewey and co-author Charles Weston Noell. Lewey claimed to have written the