Depot Museum Will Host Book Signing on Saturday

The La Grange MKT Depot Museum will have extended visiting hours Saturday as it hosts author Ken E. Stavinoha for a book-signing event.

Stavinoha’s new volume is “Their Rails Crossed in Wallis,” a history of two South Central Texas railroads whose tracks intersected in 1887.

The depot museum normally is open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays, as well as 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays. But this Saturday, March 2, it will stay open for Stavinoha’s 3 to 4:30 p.m. book signing. Admission to the event and to the museum is free.

Stavinoha has been a researcher of Texas railroad history and active collector and preservation advocate of transportation and communication related artifacts since the 1980s. Artifacts from his collection have been exhibited at many area museums including the Rosenburg Railroad Museum, the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station and the Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin.

Many of his artifacts are on permanent display at the Eagle Lake Depot Museum, which was a 2018 recipient of the Preservation Texas Honor Award. Stavinoha is president of the Eagle Lake museum.

Wallis became a railroad town in 1879 when the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, building from Galveston, reached there. The town became a crossroads when the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad built through it in June 1887.

Copies of “Their Rails Crossed at Wallis” will be available for purchase at the La Grange Depot, 260 N. Washington St., during the book-signing event. The museum has an extensive display of Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railway artifacts, model trains, and two authentic cabooses. Built in 1897, the depot is a Recorded Texas Historical Landmark and the oldest depot in the state still in its original location.