More about La Plata and Trains

Here are a few more little fun facts about La Plata, which is indeed pronounced “luh-PLAY-tuh.” First, it’s an easy drive north from Columbia on Highway 63, and although I was born, grew up, and went to college in Columbia, I don’t think I ever visited La Plata. Seems like we always explored south, west, or east, and not much north.



1. A famous La Plata native was Lester Dent, who wrote 159 Doc Savage pulp-fiction novels under the pen name Kenneth Robeson. He wrote loads of other novels—crimes and mysteries—as well. He was well-traveled and an adventurer.

2. The Santa Fe Espresso restaurant in downtown La Plata was pretty nice. We were there in the middle of the afternoon and were the only customers. We found it quite pleasant, and we were glad we stopped in for our lunch.



3. The town square has a nice park in the middle of it, with a children’s playground and a lovely, well-maintained community shelterhouse, with loads of picnic tables.



4. At the end of August is the Annual La Plata Soybean Festival, with one of my favorite Missouri bands, Keota. It sure looks like a fun event, including a “Hometown Hootenanny,” a Queen Soya, a baby show and kiddie parade, ice cream and homemade pie, a Soybean Festival Parade, Soybean Olympics, Cake Walk, and—always better to watch than to participate in—a hotdog eating contest. We won’t be able to go this year, but I’m putting in on my calendar for next year.

5. Did you know that the horns of different railroad lines sound slightly different chords? If you’re a musician, you can have fun testing your ears as you learn to distinguish the different tunings.

First, a basic introduction to train horns, and how they work.

A fun collection of different train horns, including many vintage ones, with plenty of sound files.

Info on the very popular “K horns,” again with plenty of sound files.

Also, using long and short blasts of the horn, locomotives can communicate with anyone in earshot in using something like Morse code. Now that they have radios, the many kinds of signals used in the past are rarely used today. But here’s one key to the various signals.

6. Finally, for fun, and to get it hopelessly stuck in your head, here are two versions of Johnny Mercer’s “On the Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe.” One with Judy Garland, from the 1946 film “The Harvey Girls,” and the other performed by composer Johnny Mercer himself, with Jo Stafford, the Pied Pipers, and Paul Weston & His Orchestra (1944).