Runaway Mine Train

Runaway Mine Train opened in 1966 as the original mine-train roller coaster — the first installation anywhere of a design Arrow Development would go on to build at dozens of parks worldwide over the following decades. Six Flags Over Texas commissioned Arrow specifically to build a coaster that could follow the park's rolling terrain using their newly developed tubular steel track, rather than the rigid, straight-line layouts wooden coasters of the era typically required.

The result was a gentle but technically significant ride: modest drops and speeds by later standards, but a winding, terrain-hugging layout through Old West-themed scenery in the Texas section that proved steel track could deliver a genuinely different riding experience from wood. Its success at Six Flags Over Texas directly led Arrow to refine the mine-train format further, eventually adding the central-spine reinforced track used on later installations like Six Flags Great Adventure's own Runaway Mine Train, which opened eight years afterward.

Now approaching six decades of continuous operation, this installation is both the park's original steel coaster and the progenitor of an entire coaster category still represented at parks around the world. Its enduring presence in the Texas section offers a direct link back to Six Flags Over Texas's earliest years as the first Six Flags park ever built.