The tracks the volunteers came to resurrect had their own history. Construction of the Swedish three-foot gauge Norsholm-Bersbo railway began in April 1877, opening to traffic on November 20, 1878. For seven decades, these narrow rails carried passengers and freight through the forests of southern Ostergotland. The line became part of the larger Norsholm-Vastervik-Hultsfred Railway, which Swedish State Railways nationalized on July 1, 1949. Fifteen years later, the tracks were torn up. The embankments remained, the station areas stood empty, and the right-of-way waited through a decade of silence until the Museum Association Risten-Lakvik Railway arrived to bring it back to life.

The year 1973 brought the railway its first locomotives. A Gmeinder diesel-hydraulic from 1948, the largest 600mm gauge diesel on Swedish rails, arrived from Aspa Bruk and received the number RKJ 4. A Jung steam locomotive from 1925 became RLJ 2, named Lakvik and later renamed A. Dahl. A pneumatic locomotive came from the mines of Langban in Varmland. In 1974, the crown jewel arrived: Ljunggrens Work No. 37 of 1919, the only surviving 600mm gauge steam locomotive manufactured by Ljunggrens. It became RLJ 1, named Risten. By 1976, scheduled trains were running for the first time, carrying passengers in small carts along restored tracks.

Heritage railways require more than locomotives. The former station building at Lakvik was privately owned, so the volunteers found a similar building from Bersbo, took it apart piece by piece in 1987, and moved it to its new home. In 1997, they acquired the Atvidaberg goods shed and relocated it to Lakvik as well. The level crossing completed in 1994 allowed track extension southward. The carriage shed grew through the 2000s, its roof finished by 2007. Every structure represents volunteer hours, donations, and the patient accumulation of railway infrastructure that commercial operators had abandoned decades earlier.

The southern extension became the railway's defining project. Work on the main track through the station area toward Risten began in summer 2002. By November 2003, the Risten station building stood in place, ready for renovation. Tracklaying continued through the decade, yard by yard. On Saturday, August 13, 2011, the museum reached a milestone when the first train arrived at Risten station. The following June, Ostergotland County Governor Elisabeth Nilsson officially opened the completed line. The railway now runs north from Lakvik to Backasand and south through a junction at Rosenhall to Risten, with eventual ambitions to reach Torphangenfarther along the historic right-of-way.

The locomotive roster grew international. In December 2013, a Maffei steam locomotive from 1925 arrived from the Lynton and Barnstaple Railway in Devon, England, becoming RLJ 3 and taking the name Lakvik. The original Risten locomotive, after restoration in 2012, was renamed K.G. Kindgren. Today the railway operates three steam locomotives, two diesel-hydraulic engines, and three diesel-mechanical units. Increased passenger traffic required a second summer carriage by 2013. What began as enthusiasts outgrowing a forest clearing has become a living museum, where 600mm gauge steam power still runs on Swedish soil, carrying passengers through the landscape that narrow-gauge railways helped open a century and a half ago.