This weekend is the last of the season for Lauritzen Gardens' new Model Railroad Garden. The photos I'd taken earlier in the summer I had accidentally sent off into the ether; but, after a couple hours' fooling around while the Red Sox beat the Rockies, I retrieved them for sharing. My 9 August entry is about this haven for big and little boys, with its four train lines in G scale (larger than the usual model trains), including the Big Boy Line symbolizing the Union Pacific's Big Boy Locomotive No. 4023--which I'll show later--in Kenefick Park atop the bluff south of the Gardens.
I also explained earlier that what I first saw as ceramic are really models of all natural materials, as explained in brochure quotes below. The setting is a steep little hillside between the Rose Gardens above and the end of the Garden in the Glen, set under trees, with cedar trunk sections installed to complete the rustic look. It's obvious why the caretakers have problems with twigs, funnel-web spiders, the wild turkey flocks, and an occasional raccoon.
Above is the entrance from the southern approach through the Garden in the Glen. The hillside is terraced for the different tracks, and visitors walk under the bridges, as shown below.
At left is the Woodmen Tower. "The building's base is elm bark, and its exterior stonework is elm and buckeye. Window trim is . . . bamboo and red twig dogwood . . . lettering is . . . contorta twigs."
Right next to the tree trunk is our tallest present skyscraper, First National Tower. "The base . . . is made of locust bark, the stonework is elm bark, window trim is euonymus branches and bamboo reed, and the top trim is made of bamboo." A bit right of center is Stanford White's Omaha Building, shown closer below with the Rose Theater left of it. In the far distance is the longest tunnel. All the landscaping has to be hand-watered.
The exotic-looking Rose Theater, built in 1926 and restored in the 1990s, has a roof of eucalyptus, "the marquee is made of contorta, sponge mushroom and eucalyptus, . . . the columns are banana stems, towers are made of gourds, cinnamon sticks and lichens . . . ."
The Omaha Building, "Omaha's first skyscraper" from 1888, has ". . . lower floors' stonework through elm bark, tops of columns are cinnamon sticks, trim is . . . burning bush . . . the eagle ornamentation above the entrance is made of pine cones and tree fern stem."
The largest building at the bottom of this assorted group is our extant cast-iron-front building, the J.P. Cooke Building, 1309-1315 Howard Street. "Molding tops are live oak acorn caps, columns are willow branches, and keystones are long needle pine seeds. The stoop is made of shelf fungi, and the door handle is grapevine tendrils." Half hidden behind it is an Old Market Building with its porch at 11th and Howard, with "sidewalks . . . of cedar, arches are long needle pine . . . columns burning bush, and the window trim . . . of willow and red twig dogwood."
The little turreted building to their left in the sunlight is the Anheuser-Busch Building: "The stair steps and arches consist of sponge mushroom, columns are sugar pine seeds, oak bark and cinnamon sticks, and the flagpole is . . . corkscrew willow."
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