Miss Linda, the Memphis LR Railroad had been completed from Devall’s Bluff to a railhead across the Arkansas River from Little Rock at least by 1862. The railhead was a little village called Huntersville, located right on the river somewhere within the confines of present-day NLR. Many of the sick from Fort Hindman traveled to hospitals in LR on the RR in June and July of 1862. Completion of that section between Madison and Devall’s Bluff occurred after the war, and Nathan Bedford Forrest was in charge of that operation (thus Forrest City in St. Francis County).

Check the following (under Civil War through Reconstruction):

http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=1185