By AARON MUELLER
Niles Daily Star

The sound of rushing water, the blare of locomotive whistles and the clickity-clack of train tracks can be heard yards away from the railway garden at the Fernwood Botanical Garden and Nature Preserve.

Upon entering the garden, one can smell the fresh spring air and flowers and take in the elaborate display of trains cars, shrubs and water, making for a truly sensory experience.

The Niles botanical garden opened the structure last weekend for its second year, and it will be open until October.

The 50-by-50 foot elaborate model train garden features 510 feet of track over four levels, the highest about seven feet tall. A mini rushing waterfall runs down from the top of a mountain, which is made of seven tons of cedar slab wood, into a 10-foot-wide pond that has tracks running over top.

Jan Ferris, special projects manager at Fernwood, said children love the display since there is constant activity on the four levels of track, which features two tunnels that people can walk under, including one with low clearance for the youngsters.

The kids are particularly fascinated with the eggliner, a bright orange oval-shaped locomotive that races across the track much faster than the bigger box cars.

“They love to chase the eggliner around the track,” Ferris said. “They like following him because he goes in tunnels and disappears and then comes out.”

This year’s theme is lighthouses, featuring intricate replica models of eight different lighthouses across the country, including the one in St. Joseph. Also new this year is the Notre Dame Golden Dome replica, in addition to other local structures like the Niles train depot.

The display was designed by botanical garden architect and naturalist Paul Busse, who has installed more than 100 railway gardens across the country. Ferris said the display took a team of nine people two weeks to build last year and was well worth the work.

The numbers of visitors nearly doubled last summer in addition to an increase in memberships of 12 percent.

“People come for this who may have never been here before and then they realize all the gardens and the arboretum and the nature preserve and they become members,” she said.
Ferris said Fernwood used to bring in month-long exhibits to draw in visitors.

“Those were pretty costly,” she said. “For the same investment, we have something that’s permanent now. It keeps people coming back.”

Train Day
Today is National Train Day, which will be celebrated at the Niles Amtrak station, with special exhibits and activities from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Fernwood will also honor the day by doing drawings for prizes for children at the railway garden. It will also be the debut of the Purdue Boilermaker train car.