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Missouri Life / December-January 2009 / There's Silver in Those Rails

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There's Silver in Those Rails

Train Party: 80 Trains, a Railroad Museum, and a Depot Inn

 

Two highways intersect on La Plata’s eastern shoulder. On the map, they form a plus sign, slightly bent at the top so the road doesn’t miss Kirksville. Good thing. People in Chicago depend on that road. So do people in Galesburg and Ft. Madison and Dodge City and Kansas City. Those are towns along the route of Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, which rolls across Missouri on the same rail bed that’s routed passengers from Chicago to Los Angeles since 1926. The Amtrak version of the old Santa Fe Chief stops daily in La Plata to shuttle students, alumni, parents, and professors to and from Truman State University.

Pursuing its goal as “America’s premier public liberal arts and sciences university,” this Kirksville knowledge factory takes fertile minds and turns them into bountiful yields. Ol’ Harry would be proud, even though he rarely visited the school, according to one state senator who opposed the name change from Northeast Missouri State University.

I suspect Harry would be pleased, too, that the old Santa Fe Chief survives in some form. And in an hour, I would board the eastbound train for Chicago.

I left Highway 63 and entered La Plata, the Spanish word for silver. I found the old railroad station. A solitary figure sat trackside on a bench outside the depot. As I approached, I noticed he held a portable two-way radio.

“Train on time?” I asked.

“Three hours behind,” he responded. “But they’ll make up some of that time.” He didn’t seem concerned. He told me he comes down every day to greet the train and answer queries from passengers. As we talked trains, I was reminded that La Plata’s oldest industry is its newest industry. And with three hours to kill, I decided to check it out.

I walked into La Plata. You can walk anywhere in La Plata, population barely into four digits. But something big is happening here. I walked to the Depot Inn & Suites. Somewhere in the world, there may be a hotel more dedicated to the history of train travel, but I haven’t found it. Sure, every town with a caboose in its park has a railroad museum of sorts. But the Depot Inn is a rail fan’s dream: a railroad museum with a hotel built around it. People come from all over the nation—by train—to stay here.

I passed a pair of retired Amtrak mail cars packed with railroad displays, and a handcar, all sentries near the entrance to the inn. The front desk and lobby are modeled after a train depot ticket counter and waiting room. Throughout the hotel, railroad memorabilia hangs everywhere, even in the indoor pool area. But don’t assume that the décor is all track and no treat. The suites are luxurious. Hundreds of visitors from every corner of the world roll out of La Plata impressed with this little gem in the middle of America. There’s even the Train Watching Lookout Point Cabin, a covered shelter overlooking the railroad tracks, where folks listen to a radio scanner with conversations from approaching trains. Hotel guests can tune to the local rail cam on their room’s cable TV. They never have to wait long since the rails feel the rush of eighty trains per day.

That’s one reason TrainWeb relocated from Fullerton, California, to tiny La Plata. Never heard of TrainWeb? Neither had I. But millions of rail fans know TrainWeb.com hosts more than a thousand independent railroad-related web sites. That’s a lot of choo choo.

There’s a bigger reason the business moved to La Plata. Even with all those web visits, the bulk of their revenues come from a spin-off business called TrainParty.com. “For years, people had been calling us asking if we could recommend where they could purchase party supplies with a railroad theme,” says Stephen Grande, one of the founding members of TrainWeb. “Most often, they were parents of small children. But sometimes it would be someone from a railroad museum that wanted partyware for an event at the museum or the family of a retiring railroad employee that wanted to throw them a railroad-themed retirement party.” Generally, existing party supply stores didn’t have adequate supplies or selection of railroad-related party items. So the TrainWeb folks started TrainParty.com. As the business skyrocketed, La Plata’s central location jumped out as a perfect distribution point.

Liberty had been the group’s first choice. “But fate had other plans in store for us,” Stephen says. Depot Inn owner Tom Marshall called TrainParty to order a large number of train whistles to celebrate the grand opening of his new railroad-theme hotel. The hotel and the supplier “hit it off right off the bat,” Stephen remembers, “as both certainly understood the concept of operating a business around a railroad theme.”

TrainWeb partners Ray Burns and Shivam Surve visited La Plata, and the locals rolled out the red rails. “They did a lot to help make this a good move,” Stephen says.

La Plata rides the crest of its newfound rail resurgence. Downtown, the American Passenger Rail Heritage Foundation is restoring one of La Plata’s historic buildings by converting it to the new Silver Rails Gallery and the Silver Rails Memorial Library. The gallery will be the first of its kind to focus exclusively on art, photography, and railroad-related creative works.

The developers are building up steam. And borrowing inspiration from the world’s chief imagineer, who grew up in neighboring Marceline, they have big plans. On the drawing board, the Silver Rails Resort features a forty-eight-suite Pullman Court, with three tiers of track-mounted sleeping cars on a bluff overlooking the railroad. A Tour Train will loop through the resort and make seven stops, including a railroad theme park, retail stores, a water/air park, even an energy farm featuring wind and solar. The resort will house an eighty-thousand-square-foot museum devoted exclusively to the history of passenger rail travel, past, present, and future. At the north end, a 250-room resort hotel will feature a spa and convention facilities. A convention with fifteen hundred attendees would more than double the population of La Plata. Too ambitious, you say? Don’t underestimate the rail fans of the world. If you build it, they will come.

Of course, some facets of the resort project have been slowed by the recession. For the moment, visitors can avail themselves of several guided tours to nearby destinations along the Avenue of the Greats (also known as Highway 36), including Twain to the east and Disney to the west.

During my walk back to the depot, a van slowed, and the driver asked if I needed a lift. It was the hotel shuttle that runs to the Amtrak station. I demurred, in favor of exercise.

It reminds me of a story my father told me. In the 1930s, he was a student at Truman, called Kirksville State Teachers College back when he hitchhiked home on the weekends.

One Friday afternoon, he packed his suitcase and walked to the highway to thumb a ride home. On Highway 63 near Kirksville’s south city limits, he placed his bag down, a Kirksville college pennant plastered on its side. A multitude of cars bypassed him on his goal to reach the Macon junction and head east to Hannibal. In the distance, he noticed a sleek black limousine approaching. He figured it was useless to stick out his thumb, but he did anyway. The limousine slowed. He couldn’t see anything inside the car because the windows were tinted. The car passed him slowly and pulled onto the shoulder. He was still hesitant to run after the car but picked up his bag and ran to catch up. A chauffeur got out.

“Where you headed?” the chauffeur asked.

“Hannibal.”

“Well, we’d like to give you a lift, if you’re a Kirksville student.”

“Well, I am, and I appreciate it,” Dad beamed. The driver put Dad’s bag in the trunk and opened the passenger door. Seated inside was a distinguished-looking, white-haired man who could have passed for Twain’s ghost. 

The chauffeur made the introduction: “This is J.C. Penney.” Even back in the ’30s, Penney was in his sixties. “We’re happy to have a Kirksville student to ride with us,” he welcomed Dad.

“Well, I appreciate the ride, especially with you,” Dad stammered. Penney explained why he stopped, “It’s Friday. You look like a student. You have the emblems on your bag. I enjoy conversations with college students because I get ideas about merchandising. I don’t get enough opportunities to learn about people’s wants and needs for merchandise.” They talked for the hour it took to reach Macon.

In those days, old Highway 63 rolled right through La Plata. Nowadays, one could argue, the major thoroughfare through town has tracks of silver.

For more information, visit www.amtrak.com, www.trainparty.com, www.depotinnandsuites.com, or www.cityoflaplata.com.

Also, check out the live web cams of the La Plata tracks. You might even see the Southwest Chief on its way through.