Lauritzen Christmas Show, Durham Tree

What one hears at the annual poinsettia show is trains, model trains.  My photos didn't always stop them in their tracks, but it's a big attraction for youngsters, along with the model buildings that are taken up every autumn from the outdoor Model Railroad Garden, allowing me to get some close-ups.

As always, the focal point is the giant tree of poinsettia rows.

One of the tracks circles it from the exhibition room into the entrance lobby.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above is Joslyn Castle, also seen in the larger photo, with the Cathedral in the background.

A little streetcar much like the old Omaha streetcar in the basement of the Durham Museum (formerly Union Pacific Station) travels back and forth in front of several major buildings.  The Durham is immediately behind it.  Left to right are the First National Tower, our tallest now, the new Union Pacific building, and the old Union Pacific headquarters, now razed for a glass condominium tower.  I might add that the U.P. Museum is now excellently installed in the beautiful old Council Bluffs library at the southeast corner of Bayliss Park, which I finally saw last week.

An artifical koi pond has been built in the middle, besides the regular large koi pond south of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This year's Durham Museum tree, 40 feet high, I think, with enormous ornaments, those twisted cones between two and three feet long.  Downstairs is another charming show of miniature rooms and buildings by several Iowa crafters and a wonderful traveling Smithsonian show of Nashville's Hatch Letter Press Printing (1879), with a video showing the old, narrow store cluttered full with shelves of wooden printing blocks and lead fonts to use on its many old presses, the exhibition have several posters across the decades, including early Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley, plus a small display of print objects done at UNO by various artists.