At the NYBG Holiday Train Show, magic is passed along through generations
WNYC News | Dec 3, 2022
G-scale model trains whiz overhead on replicas of New York City bridges made from thousands of sticks at the 31st annual Holiday Train Show, open now at the New York Botanical Garden. Kids race past 190 miniature versions of landmarks like Grand Central Terminal, the Guggenheim Museum and Belvedere Castle. Sunlight streaming through the Conservatory's glass dome catches on plants and glittery Christmas displays alike.
Applied Imagination, the company that puts the show together, painstakingly recreates the facades of iconic New York City buildings using only organic matter that’s already dead. Fallen sticks and leaves become infrastructure. Plant-based resin transforms to glass. The Kentucky-based team takes field trips to nearby forests to collect materials.
It’s a tactic the company’s founder, Paul Busse, developed when he first started creating miniature cities and train-scapes for botanical gardens in the 1980s. “Plastic models were not elevated enough to kind of dress these really elegant glass houses. And that was when the idea of botanical architecture was born,” said Laura Busse Dolan, Busse’s daughter and the current owner of Applied Imagination.
Correction: In a previous version of this story, Grand Central Terminal was improperly identified.
