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This allows the shop facility to make room for exhibitors who fill the structure with railroad memorabilia displays and model train exhibits.

The museum rolls its historic stock onto the tracks outside the shop for display. The Arkansas Railroad Museum holds its “Railroadiana” event annually in April. A variety of rolling stock, a full-scale inside-the-building railroad depot, and railroad memorabilia are on display. The locomotive is in the process of a restoration, which is on view for visitors to experience. The museum houses the Cotton Belt steam locomotive “819,” the last steam-powered locomotive constructed in Arkansas. The city of Pine Bluff supports the museum through annual lease payments on the structure. The museum is operated by the Cotton Belt Rail Historical Society. The Arkansas Railroad Museum is located in Pine Bluff, in the Union Pacific Railroad Company’s 1890s Old Cotton Belt Shops. In the 1950s, a paper mill industry was established. The World War II-era Pine Bluff arsenal further industrialized the economy with the production of chemical warfare agents and the construction of Grider Field as a flight training facility. In the 1930s-40s, 10 800-series steam locomotives were constructed in the Cotton Belt Shops in Pine Bluff. The cotton-based economy crashed after World War I. The economy developed around timber and cotton, and Pine Bluff became the commercial and economic center of the Arkansas Delta. With the arrival of the railroad in 1873, Pine Bluff became a cargo transport point between rail and river.

Pine Bluff, Arkansas, (population 52,000) was settled in 1819 on a bluff overlooking the Arkansas River.