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.
The model train area is modestly sized; a brisk walk around it with brief stops to admire the tiny train stations would take only a couple of minutes. But with a lingering toddler, you could be here for hours. The walkways are wide enough to accommodate ample stroller traffic, and the low fences let kids get a full view. On the Friday before the experience opened to the public, a gaggle of children gathered in wordless thrall to witness a maintenance worker repairing an engine overhead.
The train ride—a one-eighth scale model of a diesel engine—first arrived at Descanso Gardens as a seasonal attraction in the 1980s, and became a permanent feature in 1996. Its location in the central promenade “never really made sense,” Errico said. The gardens’ director of horticulture visited one of Applied Imagination’s botanical train displays in another state, she said, and decided Descanso Gardens had to have one.
The train ride closed in 2023 for the renovation, including an upgrade to be completely electric. Riders take a 4-mph train trip that loops through the seasonal display (currently sunflowers and other summery blooms), up by the mulberry pond, through the oak grove and then down past the camellia forest. The ride lasts six minutes. You straddle a low bench to ride, rendering it not entirely skirt-friendly.
There is also, naturally, an on-site gift shop in the shape of a train car.
A few things to know: The model trains run from 8:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. (Before 9 a.m., the experience is limited to members.) The train ride runs from 9:30 a.m. until 4 p.m. Visiting the model train experience is free with admission to the Descanso Gardens; tickets for the train ride are $5 per person, with a limited number sold each day. Riders must be over 30 inches tall.
