The Van Buren train is a living piece of Arkansas railroad history. Here is what the sources we could verify say.
The river town
Van Buren sits on the Arkansas River, and its Main Street is a six-block National Historic District. The Drennen-Scott house, built in 1838, predates the railroad by decades.
The Frisco arrives
The city's visitor materials say the first train arrived in Van Buren in 1876. The Arkansas & Missouri Railroad notes that most rail historians treat its tracks as part of the Frisco system, which it dates to the 1880s. The railroad's history page adds that surviving Frisco passenger depots are in Fayetteville, Van Buren and Fort Smith. The Old Frisco Depot at 813 Main Street is described by the city as a landmark for over a century and now houses the Van Buren Visitors Center. We have not verified the year the depot was built.
The A&M
The Arkansas & Missouri Railroad began operations in September 1986 as an independent railroad spun off from the Burlington Northern. Its main line runs about 150 miles between Monett, Missouri and Fort Smith, Arkansas, interchanging with BNSF, Union Pacific and CPKC and serving barges at the river ports of Van Buren and Fort Smith.
The excursions
Passenger excursions began in the late 1980s and became a full-time operation in the early 1990s after a private operator tested the market for a year. The railroad says it serves about 40,000 passengers a year. The Winslow tunnel, 1,700 feet long, dates to the late 1800s according to local news coverage.
Why it still matters
The same corridor that carried timber, produce and livestock now carries sightseers over trestles and through the Boston Mountains. Combined with Van Buren's Main Street and Fort Smith's frontier history, it makes a rare heritage-travel weekend.