Eureka Springs & North Arkansas Railway

Took my mom on the lunch excursion. We were delighted to find that it was a fine dining experience! The food was superb, our waitress (sorry — cannot remember her name!) was just wonderful! Every aspect of our journey was a delight!
The scenery was gorgeous! It would have been nice had it been an actual circuit, but we were not the least perturbed that we went backward for the «return» trip!
The best part was when we arrived back at the depot. We disembarked and the conductor told us if we wanted to, we could put coins on the tracks and they’d run over them for us. Well, what we did NOT know is that you must SPIT on the coins to make them stick! If I live to be a hundred I will not forget my mom telling me, «Well, Ganna — spit on the darn thing!» My mom is a priss — as am I! — of the nth degree, and we were reared to be LADIES! I’ve never spit in public in my LIFE, LOL!!!

Pleasant ride out through the wilderness, the food is pretty decent and the service was excellent. The dining car has comfortable chairs and is a nice blast from the past.

I really don’t think this is worth the money. Beware that the train doesn’t have air conditioning so on a hot day it’s a little stuffy. We were expecting a scenic ride with mountain views, but you really only see trees and brush. The whole experience takes around an hour, but the train is only moving for maybe twenty minutes. That is a long time on a hot train with no airflow. The conductor tells stories about train crashes and deaths by trains which was a little off putting with kids on the train. He does let everyone get off and smash coins on the track, which was fun. If you and your kids have never been on a train, this might be fun. If you have been on a train then I don’t really think it is worth the money or the time. (Note this is for the regular ride, not the train ride with food)

Had an awesome time! A very nice lunch ride. Recommend you try it!
The food is fine, and to me that’s not why to go. A nice ride back and forth, with pretty scenery, was very nice.

The train ride wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. The scenery wasn’t that great. And to make it worse, the train went for a couple miles, then stopped for a few minutes, and then went in reverse to get back to the depot. For some reason I assumed that the train would be going in a big loop, not reversing and going the same way we came. So the ride itself was disappointing.
The food was underwhelming. They serve it to you in this order:
tomato pasta soup – good
salad – good
roll – ok
entrée – I got prime rib and it wasn’t that great. It comes with rice pilaf and veggies. The rice pilaf was really gummy and the veggies were just ok.
dessert – The dessert was a baked Alaska. It was just ok. The cake part of it was really dry.
Our waitress was friendly so that made it a more enjoyable experience.
Eating on a train was a fun experience, but overall it just wasn’t as good as I thought it was going to be.

The train ride is about an hour long that begins near town so it takes a bit to get to the real scenery. Once you get going the views are decent, but honestly you can see as nice a view (if not better) from the roadways in the area. The train ride itself is a neat experience if you have never ridden on one of these old trains, but if you have done it before there wasn’t much novel about this adventure. We took the lunch train and dined on-​board. The price for lunch over a regular excursion ticket was not excessive, and the food quality was superb. The service was very attentive. Although one server took care of the entire dining car it seemed as if we had more personal attention.