"He was found in the wreck with his hand on the throttle
All scalded to death by the steam."
Which became the title of a book:
Scalded to Death by the Steam
© Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1984; W. H. Allen Co., 1985
Excerpt:
I
The city council met last night;
the vote was four to three,
To tear the home town depot down,
and build a factory,
To take that strip of history,
and tear it off the map,
To take old Engine Number Nine,
and melt her into scrap...
(“Blue Water Line,” Anonymous)
In my grandparents’ house where I spent some years as a child in the mid-forties, there was an old wind-up Victrola with packets of needles and a cabinet full of old records. There was also a delicate lady's guitar with one frizzled string.
On rainy days, I played the Victrola. One of the first records I discovered was Vernon Dalhart’s “Wreck of the Old 97.” I listened to it over and over, thrilling to the words. “The Wreck of the 1256,” “The Wreck of the Virginian No. 3,” “The Wreck of the C & O No. 5 ”—all these I loved and learned. My grandfather was something of a train buff, and encouraged my singing. Among his frequent homilies was the story of the brave engineer Billy Richardson who had been tragically killed on duty. He urged me to remember, perhaps sensing that the railroad, at least as he knew it, was dying.
Lexington had once been a fairly busy rail terminal. By the tracks that ran down behind my grandparents’ house I stood every day in summer, making friends long-distance with the nameless engineer who backed the only slow C&O freight engine into Lexington each morning around eleven, then took it out again a while later, this time headfirst. Soon it would stop coming altogether.
One day Andaddy had business in West Virginia, and I rode along with him in his 1926 Model T. Ford, which he called his “confounded machine.” I still remember the spring morning, “the sunlight piercing the leaves,” as one of the songs went. By the side of the road beyond Covington there was a sign: JERRY’S RUN. I knew the cities in the songs existed, like Washington and Charlottesville, but it took that tiny landmark to convince me of a deeper truth. “From Covington to Jerry’s Run, old number five did roll....”
* * * * *
Here's "The Wreck of the C & O No. 5." The footage in the video was shot on the Western Maryland Scenic Railway.
And now, not "The Wreck of the C & O No. 5," but "The Wreck Of The C & O."
On the C&O Railway, trains ran either eastbound or westbound, according to the timetable. It didn't matter what their actual direction was; officially then ran either east or west.
With an odd number, Train #5 would be headed westbound on the C&O. Big Bend Tunnel is 11 miles east of Hinton. A train going from Hinton, a division point, toward Big Bend Tunnel would be eastbound. The train in this song was headed to Clifton Forge, the next division point to the east. So "The Wreck Of The C & O" is about an eastbound train.
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