A little bit of history about the D&R from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
The line was initially chartered in 1883, and the company reorganized under its present name in 1900. When originally constructed, the railroad carried cotton and other agricultural products. The predominant traffic shifted to coal by 1900, thanks to extensive semi-anthracite coal production along the railroad. Coal production along the D&R ended by the mid-1950s. At one time, the railroad owned the Dardanelle Pontoon Bridge & Turnpike Company, which operated a pontoon bridge (for wagons and later automobiles, not trains) across the Arkansas River at Dardanelle. The D&R was also a leader in the trend for railroads to branch into other transportation modes, owning a highway subsidiary from 1919-1960. The highway subsidiary, Dardanelle Transfer Company, operated both bus and truck service over an expanded territory much larger than was served by the railroad itself.
