Rail service reached Mount Vernon in 1872 when the Mobile and Alabama Grand Trunk Railroad Company laid its first tracks to the town and began daily service to Mobile. A year later the line was extended north to the Tombigbee River, where a ferryboat carried freight and passengers across to another track heading toward Montgomery, before the company ran out of money. During the following years of railroad mergers, the Eastern Tennessee, Virginia & Georgia Railway bought the line in 1887 and obtained the right to build a freight and passenger depot at Mount Vernon. Although still owned by ETV&G, the route from Mobile to Selma was renamed the Mobile and Birmingham Railway Company a year later, and M&BR was acquired by Southern Railway in 1899. Around the turn of the 20th century, Mount Vernon was also served by a narrow-gauge system operated by Tombigbee & Northern Railroad, which was absorbed into the Alabama, Tennessee & Northern Railroad system and converted to standard gauge in 1905. For many years the Frisco Line ran west of US Highway 43 and the Norfolk Southern Line ran east of it, but today only the Norfolk Southern tracks remain in use.