St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railway

This Jackson, Missouri tourist railroad takes its name from the original St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway — the 'Iron Mountain' — which ran from 1856 until its 1917 merger into the Missouri Pacific Railroad, was swept into Jay Gould's empire in 1883, and was famously robbed by the James-Younger Gang at Gad's Hill in 1874. The modern heritage operation took shape in the mid-1980s: in 1985 Shelby Brown arranged the purchase of steam locomotive No. 5 for the Southeast Missouri Steam Locomotive Association, and the engine was moved to Jackson, where a tourist railroad was being developed over former Missouri Pacific trackage. No. 5 returned to service in 1986, pulling passenger trips under the revived Iron Mountain name between Jackson, Gordonville, Dutchtown, and Delta. The steamer made its final run in 1999 after failing an FRA inspection with damaged flues, but the railroad has continued operating roughly six miles of shortline in Cape Girardeau County with weekend excursions, dinner trains, and Civil War-themed runs, while a fundraising and restoration effort launched in 2021 works toward returning No. 5 to steam and restoring trackage between Jackson and Gordonville.