Landmarks Of America Model Railroad Exhibit Opens

May 23, 2006

The “Model Railroad Garden: Landmarks of America” exhibit picks up steam with new attractions at the Chicago Botanic Garden – a 385-acre living plant museum featuring 23 distinct display gardens surrounded by lakes, as well as a prairie and woodlands.

Visitors can step into an enchanting world of small-scale trains, landmarks and plants, and learn how to combine a love for gardening and G scale model railroading.

The G-scale (garden scale) trains traverse high and low, across bridges and trestles, around miniature buildings and past beautiful plantings designed to scale. Others come to gather ideas for their own backyard garden railway.

Garden railroading is the fastest growing segment of hobby railroading, and more and more gardeners are “getting railroaded.” Today, the United States has as many as 25,000 garden railways.

New scenes in the Garden’s 2006 exhibit include the original Route 66 Diner in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and an all-new Hollywood, complete with Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, the most famous movie theatre in the world.

“Landmarks of America” trains speed on 1,700 feet of track through miniature scenes of the USA’s most treasured sites. Buildings, tunnels and bridges are intricately hand crafted with natural materials, including twigs, bark, leaves, acorns and pebbles. More than 6,000 tiny plants of 175 varieties recreate the geographical landscape of America. Vignettes of tiny people and animals give the exhibit a storybook feel. Sound effects and a working geyser capture imaginations.

Paul Busse of Applied Imagination, Alexandria, Ky., helped design and create the “Landmarks of America” exhibit. Busse’s fascination with trains began at age five when he received an American flyer train. By 1982, he was a landscape architect and entered a model train garden in the Ohio State Fair. Since then, he has enjoyed a career in train garden design. His exhibits are in numerous private and public spaces, including the botanic gardens in New York and Atlanta.

The Chicago Botanic Garden’s 7,500 square foot Model Railroad Garden features 15 trains, including Thomas the Tank Engine, which moves to a new track near Main Street, and two new train lines, the Chicago & North Western and Burlington Route. Other highlights include the Santa Fe Super Chief, Bob “Bozo*” Bell Circus, Napa Valley Wine, Golden Gate Line, Denver & Rio Grande Western and Amtrak. Keep your eyes peeled for the elusive Ladybug Train. A devoted group of Chicago Botanic Garden staff and volunteers work daily to ensure trains run smoothly and on time.

Visitors travel coast to coast from the Seattle Space Needle past Yellowstone, with its Old Faithful Geyser, and Yosemite National Park, underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and past a Napa Valley vineyard, where miniature ivy plants become grapevines. An old-fashioned Hollywood movie set is just a skip across the track from the Muir Woods and Badlands National Park.

The Model Railroad Garden is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, with special hours until 8 p.m. until Monday, Sept 4 2006.