All aboard! Starting this week, the Descanso Railroad train ride is open to riders once again. And model trains winding their way around a new railway garden promise to charm a generation of engine-obsessed little kids. Imagine a garden where cedar trunks and fallen branches from nearby oaks uphold an overhead miniature railway, with more rails and trains running at toddler eye level.
The landscape is dotted with small plants and miniature versions of iconic American train stations, including L.A.’s Union Station, made of natural materials like acorns and seedpods.
The experience inside La Cañada Flintridge’s Descanso Gardens was created by a company called Applied Imagination. If you’ve ever strolled through a model garden made of natural materials in a major American city, Applied Imagination likely built it . The company provided the cedar tree trunks, which are scrap from furniture factories, and built the tiny train stations out of natural materials, including some sourced from Descanso Gardens.
The garden and railways in the model train experience are permanent, but the tiny stations are not, said director of communications Jennifer Errico. “Every six months or so, those are going to change out, and Applied Imagination will bring another exhibition to the train garden,” she said. The next rotation will be roadside attractions and include a miniature Randy’s Donuts and Corn Palace .
And after that, something sure to excite the preschool crowd: dinosaurs. Th.