A miniature train has run through Zilker Park, on and off, since the twenty second of April, 1961, when a toy store owner and a railroad worker put the first one on the ground and called it the Austin Eagle. It hauled generations of children on a slow loop past Barton Springs and along Barton Creek, and it retired in 1996 after thirty five years. The city replaced it in 1997 with the Zilker Zephyr, which ran until heavy rain in 2019 eroded the roadbed badly enough to close it. The park then went five years without a train, which turned out to be a genuine civic grievance rather than a minor inconvenience, and the campaign to restore it was persistent. It came back in June 2024 as an electric train, and the name was chosen by public vote: more than seven hundred submissions, narrowed and then voted on by over seven thousand people, who picked the Zilker Eagle. The name reaches back to the 1961 original and past it to the Missouri Pacific passenger train that once served Austin. The route is essentially the old one, running at a walking pace between the picnic ground, the creek and the springs, which means the view from it is roughly what the park looked like before either train existed.
Getting there
30.2645, -97.7704
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
Whistlestop tells you this story automatically when you drive past. No searching, no tapping, nothing to ask.
