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What I was looking forward to the most for walking around the train tracks was to get the chance to get some photos of the River King Mine Train.



The River King Mine Train; which opened with the park in 1971, is the oldest coaster in the park and is pretty difficult to photograph as over the years trees have grown all around it and covered it up.



We had a timetable to keep to as the Tommy G. Robertson Railroad needed to start running so I didn't quite have the time to take all the photos that I had hoped to as the River King only ran a single test run while we were in the area.



When the River King Mine Train opened in 1971 it was the fifth full size mine train coaster that Arrow Dynamics brought from a blueprint to reality.



What shows how popular and well built these rides are is that out of the eleven mine trains that Arrow built from the first one at Six Flags Over Texas in 1966 to 1974 only one of them; Excalibur at Six Flags Astroworld, is gone.  The rest either still run at their original parks like the River King Mine Train or they were moved to other parks like the River King Mine Train's mirror image that was moved to Dollywood in 1989 and then finally Magic Springs in Arkansas in 2002. 
 


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Paul B. Drabek