The song came first. Let there be no doubt whatsoever as to that fact. Hoboes and folk musicians had been singing about a mythical and magical train which would carry them, "From the great Atlantic Ocean, to the wide Pacific shore..." since the late 19th century. But after The Carter Family, Roy Acuff, and others sung the tune to the top of the charts in the mid-1930s, the management of the perenially struggling Wabash Railroad belatedly realized that they had a potential public relations gold mine on their hands. And so at some point in early 1950 the Wabash's daytime express train between St. Louis and Detroit was renamed from the Detroit Special (eastbound) and the St. Louis Special (westbound) to—drum roll and banjo licks, please—the Wabash Cannon Ball.