All aboard! Starting this week, the Descanso Railroad train ride is once again open to passengers. And miniature trains running through a new railroad garden promise to delight a generation of locomotive-obsessed kids.
Imagine a garden where cedar logs and fallen branches from nearby oak trees support a miniature railroad, with more rails and trains passing at eye level for small children. The landscape is dotted with tiny plants and miniature versions of iconic American train stations, including Los Angeles’ Union Station, made from natural materials like acorns and seed pods.
The experience inside La Cañada Flintridge's Descanso Gardens was created by a company called Applied Imagination. If you've ever walked through a model garden made of natural materials in a major American city, Probably applied imagination built itThe company provided the cedar logs, leftover from furniture factories, and built the small train stations from natural materials, including some sourced from Descanso Gardens.
The garden and railroads in the model train experience are permanent, but the small stations are not, said communications director Jennifer Errico.
“Every six months or so, they’ll be refreshed and Applied Imagination will bring another exhibit to the train yard,” he said. The next rotation will be roadside attractions and will include a Randy’s Donuts and a miniature Corn Palace. And after that, something sure to excite preschoolers: dinosaurs.
Part of the Descanso Gardens model train experience are miniature versions of iconic American railroad stations, like this model of Union Station.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
The miniature train area is modest in size; a quick walk through it with brief stops to admire the tiny train stations would take just a couple of minutes. But with a toddler, you could be here for hours. The walkways are wide enough to accommodate ample stroller traffic, and low fences allow kids a full view. On the Friday before the experience opened to the public, a group of children gathered quietly to witness a maintenance worker repairing an engine overhead.
The train ride, a one-eighth scale model of a diesel engine, first came to Descanso Gardens as a seasonal attraction in the 1980s and became a permanent attraction in 1996. Its location on the central promenade “never made much sense,” Errico said. The gardens’ horticulture director 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 renovation, including an upgrade to be all-electric. Riders take a 4-mph train ride that passes the seasonal display (currently sunflowers and other summer flowers), up the mulberry pond, through the oak forest, and then down the camellia forest. The ride takes six minutes. You straddle a low bench to ride, making it not entirely skirt-friendly.
People ride the new electric train at Descanso Gardens.
(Gardens of Rest)
Naturally, there is also a souvenir shop in the shape of a train carriage.
Some things to know: The miniature trains run from 8:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. (before 9 a.m., the experience is limited to members). The train ride runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Visiting the miniature train experience is free with admission to 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.
Guests admire an elevated railway with a miniature train at Descanso Gardens.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
