The Model Train at Gardens Aglow

When I think of the holidays, I think of trains. Everyone loves trains. And everyone loves model trains even more. Beginning 2013, our G-scale model train became part of the annual Gardens Aglow event at Heritage Museums & Gardens and remains one of the most popular features of the event, to this day. If you haven’t come to Gardens Aglow, you should; the train alone is worth the trip!

The train itself is exciting, but what really make the display so much fun to watch are the bridges on which the tracks are built. The bridges are designed and built at Heritage by our horticulture and maintenance staff and are made of all-natural materials. We collect twigs and branches from the gardens and use them to construct the bridges. So far, we’ve created models of the George Washington Bridge in New York City, the Sagamore Bridge, and the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge. All are built from those same twigs and branches and are secured together with screws, nails (nail guns) and hot glue.

The bridges are large, meaning the track is about 7 feet above the ground. The top of the George Washington bridge stands over 12 feet above the ground and is over 25 feet long. Once assembled, the train’s track loop averages 175-200 feet long in total. That’s a lot of twigs, nails, and glue! When I had the idea to build the bridges, I went online and conducted research about the GW and Sagamore bridges. There was so much to learn! In particular, I paid attention to the lengths and heights of the bridges so I could scale the replicas to nearly match the proportions of the actual bridges.

When the trains and bridges were initially built in 2013, they were displayed inside our Special Exhibitions Gallery (SEG). Every year, we would construct them at our maintenance building and move them in pieces to the gallery where we would assemble them. Once assembled, we installed the track and wired them to the transformers. The train and bridges were on display inside the gallery every Gardens Aglow season from 2013 until 2019.

But as we all know, COVID-19 changed everything. In the summer of 2020, we began debating if and how we could open for Gardens Aglow, since we anticipated that people would not be comfortable or safe indoors. What would this mean for our indoor features? That season, we completely reimagined our event in order to bring the indoor elements outside, which led us to decide to construct the train exhibit in the McGraw Family Garden of the Senses.

In 2020, we chose to situate the train in The Garden of Hope section because that area’s terrace is roughly 7 feet lower in elevation than the Windmill Garden. This elevation difference allowed us to place the train on the ground in the Windmill Garden and have it extend out over the Garden of Hope terrace using two bridges: the George Washington Bridge and the Sagamore Bridge. In 2021 we added a classic New England covered bridge section and have continued extend the total track length to bring it close to the pathway on the Windmill side, enabling visitors to see it up close from above, and from below in the lower Garden of Hope. In many ways, this outdoor setting is a much better location for the train than being inside, as the terrain allows us to enhance the whole display and provide the unique experience of walking underneath the elevated track.