Fort Smith Trolley Museum

Fort Smith Trolley Museum

1926 Birney streetcar 224 passing the Fort Smith Museum of History
Established	1985
Location	100 South 4th Street, Fort Smith, Arkansas, U.S.
Type	Railroad, streetcar
Owner	Fort Smith Streetcar Restoration Association, Inc.
Website	fstm.org

The Fort Smith Trolley Museum is a streetcar and railroad museum in Fort Smith, in the U.S. state of Arkansas, which includes an operating heritage streetcar line. The museum opened in 1985, and operation of its streetcar line began in 1991. Four vehicles in its collection, a streetcar and three steam locomotives, are listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The now approximately three-quarter-mile-long (1.2 km) streetcar line also passes four NRHP-listed sites, including the Fort Smith National Historic Site, the Fort Smith National Cemetery, the West Garrison Avenue Historic District and the 1907 Atkinson-Williams Warehouse Building, which now houses the Fort Smith Museum of History.

The museum was established by the Fort Smith Streetcar Restoration Association (FSSRA), formed in 1979 to preserve and display transit history relating to Fort Smith. The first museum building was constructed in 1985, on former Missouri Pacific Railroad land, and purchases and donations of property in the 1990s allowed activities and storage to expand onto adjacent parcels. That the organization uses Streetcar in its name but named its museum a Trolley museum is a reflection of the fact that, in American English, the terms streetcar and trolley are used interchangeably. The Fort Smith Trolley Museum (FSTM) opened to the public in 1985, and trolley/streetcar operation began in 1991. FSSRA continues to be the museum's owner and operator.

Streetcar operation at the museum was inaugurated on May 19, 1991, using ex-Fort Smith Light and Traction Company car 224, a Birney-type streetcar built in 1926 by the American Car Company. In the first seven months of operation, though the end of 1991 (in which five months had daily operation), more than 10,000 rides were given. The initial line was about one-quarter mile long, using ex-Frisco freight tracks, along which FSSRA volunteers had installed trolley wire and support poles. It connected the carbarn, at 100 S. 4th Street, with the Fort Smith National Historic Site.