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This wasn't a big deal in 1903. There were lots of train wrecks and this one could have been soon forgotten like most of the rest but the ballad of Casey Jones was popular at the time and a mill worker living near the wreck wrote the ballad of The Wreck of Old 97. Later his claim was refuted.
The ballad was sung to the tune of Henry Clay Work's The Ship That Never Returned.
In the region the ballad was sung and modified for the next few years.
In 1923, Vernon Dalhart recorded the ballad and it became the first recording to sell one million copies. Afterwards the naming who got credit for writing the ballad was fought in the courts for many years. See th links below for details on who was in the squable and who finally was named author. I don't want to get in that aurgument.
In the years that followed many recording artists sang and recorded it including Roy Acuff and Johnny Cash.
And that is the my short version of the history of the ballad. There are several links below to more complete the story of its origin and development.
At the time of the wreck there was some newspaper coverage but the the reporting was casual at best.. Surviving photos were from one to three days after the wreck and mostly recorded stages of the clean up following the disaster.
So I decided to fill in the cracks with what I imagine the scene may have looked like moments after the crash.
Voila, my version of the wreck of old 97.
When they handed him his orders at Monroe, Virginia,
They said, "Steve, you're running way behind .
This is not 38, but Old 97,
You must put her in Spencer on time."
He said to his fireman,
"Just shovel on a lot more coal,
And when I cross White Oak Mountain
I want to see those drivers roll."
Now It's a mighty rough road between Lynchburg and Danville,
And on it there's a three-mile grade,
It was on that grade that he lost his brakes,
And you see what a jump he made.
He was coming down the grade doing 90 miles an hour,
When his whistle broke into a scream,
He was found in the wreck at the bottom of the trestle,
Scalded to death by the steam.
http://www.last.fm/music/Vernon+Dalhart/_/Wreck+Of+The+Old+97
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wreck_of_the_Old_97