image courtesy New York Botanical Garden
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Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Gardens
Preview on Tuesday, 12 November 2024
image courtesy New York Botanical Garden
Indoors and outdoors, the 33rd holiday train show is more lavish than ever, with an exhibit that spans several conservatory houses, an exhibition tent, and a new outdoor train display. Opening on Saturday, 16 November 2024 and continuing until Monday, 20 January 2025.
Today is the media preview, so press and influencers can get the word out.
Let's go in and see what's happening. We're invited to explore and enjoy!
Santa is here, with little gift bags for all of us who have been nice.
There's certainly a welcoming, festive air what with tasty treats, a brief informative announcement, little bites
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and sweetmeats, from bonbons to cake pops, and branded water bottles.
As well as urns dispensing tea, coffee, hot chocolate there's a delicious pomegranate beverage.
Enough pleasant socializing. Let's see the trains! And the buildings all made of plant material!
No, not lumber! Seeds and leaves and pine cone scales, bits of bark. Branches become bridges.
To begin, understand that the buildings are all scale models of actual New York City buildings. Each has a little sign to identify it, and provide its location. If it no longer exists, when it was demolished. And the trains are G Scale, 1:24,
the largest commercially available, perfect for outdoor garden railroads and large indoor displays.
We walk along under canvas but are unaware we are outside the Enid Haupt Conservatory, as our attention is engaged
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with a large raised display surface that has trains circling on tracks, buildings, trains overhead on bridges.
Grand Central Station, stately, grand actually. And Amtrak chugging overhead
Buildings, hundreds of buildings, some new, created just in time for this year's display and others, well, after 33 years, crafted for prior exhibitions. Who makes them? Applied Imagination in Alexandria, Kentucky.
Engineer Matt is walking through the Conservatory, making sure the trains are on track.
My apologies. It's a poor pun. But the trains do occasionally need to be set back on track.
There are all sorts of features such as brownstone row houses,
mansions and public buildings
and even bridges, high enough to easily walk beneath
As well as New York City buildings there are replicas of New York Botanical garden structures. For example,
the elegant Italian Renaissance museum building, complete with tulip tree allée and Fountain of Life.
But wait. What's that dome? Not the glass one on the museum itself, but the larger dome behind it . . .
Yes! Like a fractal. It is the Enid Haupt Conservatory. We're inside one, looking at another.
There are traditions, special happenings that build memories and bring happiness.
The New York Botanical Garden's Holiday Train Show is definitely a prime example.
image courtesy New York Botanical Garden
"The beloved Holiday Train Show® returns to The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) for its 33rd year of enchanting train displays and cherished seasonal traditions. Enter a winter wonderland unlike any other as the timeless holiday magic of rail travel fills the historic Enid A. Haupt Conservatory with nostalgia. Model locomotives and trolleys trundle through a showcase of nearly 200 twinkling, plant-based replicas of famed local architecture, creating a cityscape in miniature.
"From the warmth of NYBG’s landmark glasshouse to the picture-perfect outdoor display, witness by day or night a meticulously crafted world brimming with the lively energy of New York City during the holidays. Journey through the exhibition with friends and loved ones after dark and see the show in a charming new light on select evenings during Holiday Train Nights."
"Tickets available at https://www.nybg.org/visit/admission/
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