NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN HOLIDAY TRAIN SHOW
Bronx River Pkwy at Fordham Rd.
Through January 10 (closed Monday)
Timed tickets: $10-$15 children two to twelve, $20-$25 adults
718-817-8700
www.nybg.org
flickr slideshow
www.appliedimagination.biz

Back for its eighteenth year, the Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden is a spectacular display that must be seen to be believed. Designed by Paul Busse and Applied Imagination, the show spreads through much of the Enid Haupt Conservatory, with the trains gliding past classic New York City architecture both current and no longer standing, including such familiar sites as the Flatiron Building, Rockefeller Center, the Statue of Liberty, Grand Central Terminal, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, City Hall, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Radio City Music Hall, the UN, Yankee Stadium, and the Apollo as well as Roosevelt Island, Kykuit, the Bartow-Pell Mansion, the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum, the Jewish Museum, Lefferts Historic House, and some 125 or so more. (The structures aren’t built to scale or arranged geographically, so the sticklers among you might be a little annoyed, but just let it ride.) This year’s new entries are the original Pennsylvania Station and the Brooks Brothers Flagship store. Trains also cross the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, George Washington, and Hell Gate Bridges overhead while also disappearing into tunnels and behind trees and plants. The bridges and buildings are constructed using natural, organic materials, from pomegranate and honey locust thorn and black cherry wood to eucalyptus pods and hemlock cones, from honeysuckle twigs and tree sap to shelf fungus, reeds, casting resin, and beechnut husks. (Be sure to get up close to see all of the intricate design work, and pay special attention to the Guggenheim.)

Spectacular bridges hover above at Bronx train show (Photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Timed tickets also include admission to Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden and “The Little Engine That Could” puppet show in the Arthur and Janet Ross Lecture Hall; we highly suggest you schedule your visit to the NYBG – which is ridiculously easy to get to, just twenty minutes on Metro-North, with the stop right across the street from the entrance – during one of those two shows, as the conservatory will thin out just a bit, but when they let out, watch out for the crowds.