[1] There had been several Wabash Cannon Ball trains traveling throughout the middle and western United States from as early as the 1880s.

[2] The first Cannon Ball express train traveled from Chicago, Illinois, southwest to El Paso, Texas.

A. Roff wrote a song, The Great Rock Island Route, in the 1880s.

In the 1930s, after a rewrite as Wabash Cannonball, country and western singer Roy Acuff gained great popularity with the song.

[9] The train was under the administration of the Norfolk and Western Railway from 1964, as the Wabash company merged with the N&W that year.