Plan Your Weekend: Holiday Train Show Opens!

Posted in Exhibitions, Holiday Train Show on November 21 2008, by Plant Talk

Magical Display Always Delights

Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.

As a kid growing up, just a few blocks from here, the only time I got to see model trains in action was occasionally during the holidays when the boy in the apartment across the hall would invite my three sisters and me to see—briefly and no touching allowed—his miniature landscape all set up with little people and trees and trains that could be glimpsed as they made their way around make-believe villages. I was younger and shorter and had to stand on tiptoe to try to get the full effect of this tabletop other world. Regardless, I always got a sense of something fun and magical happening.

My husband confirmed this. One of three boys and with a slew of neighborhood buddies, he talks of spending hours during the holidays watching and playing with model trains, moving around at will the tiny figures and buildings and ice rinks and track segments within the diminutive fake-snow-covered scenery.

Not until I was an adult did I have the chance to be immersed in the enchanting atmosphere that is so reminiscent of this childhood memory, thanks to the Botanical Garden’s Holiday Train Show. I’ve come back to see the show several times over the years and with family members both young and old.

There is something indescribable, something that makes your heart jump a beat, when you enter the Holiday Train Show and are immediately surrounded by twinkling lights, soft whistles, and tracks that wind around waterfalls and across overhead bridges and past magnificent replicas of New York landmarks. On closer inspection, you see that each of these 140 or so buildings is made from parts of plants! And as you bend down to investigate further, all of a sudden you glimpse a train approaching and stand back to watch the scene in awe. You look around and are beckoned by other vignettes; it keeps going. You are transported.

The Holiday Train Show has gained wild popularity in its 17 years. Now that I work at the Garden, I have the benefit of seeing the show even during lunch breaks. My favorite time of day, though, is at dusk, when the show is especially charming and festive. This year the Garden will be open an extra hour on select days so you can enjoy the show well into the evening.

There is plenty to do, too, if you’d like to spend an entire day at the Garden: Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden; The Little Engine That Could™ puppet theater performance and a visit by Thomas the Tank Engine™ both later in the run; lunch and snacks at our two cafes, and holiday gift-getting at Shop in the Garden.