Ellicott City volunteers’ magical Holiday Train Garden display open for one more week
For the last 26 holiday seasons, the Ellicott City Volunteer Fire Department has been transformed into a world of magic and wonder with the help of more than 20 volunteers. The antique bay in the department is turned into a holiday train garden with seven model trains and four trolley cars winding through various holiday and winter scenes. And they have never shown the same display twice.
Looping through Christmas villages, a prehistoric desert with dinosaurs and pterodactyls and snow-covered mountains and trees, the trains display familiar brands such as Reese’s and film and television titles including, “The Polar Express” and Thomas the Tank Engine of “Thomas & Friends.”
Visitors are greeted with a candy cane and can participate in a scavenger hunt searching for items in the train garden such as a double dutch jump rope, a penguin on a roof and saltwater taffy.
The train display is built each year by community members and members of the Howard County Fire and Rescue Service. They start in October.
The garden is on display Wednesdays through Sundays through Jan. 2.
Dave Balthis of Columbia, who serves as lead engineer of the train garden, began his involvement in 1998. He retired from the Howard County Department of Fire and Rescue Services in 2009.
He said throughout his time working on the train garden, the department has never shown the same display twice.
“What I tell people when they say, ‘why do you rebuild it differently every year,’ I say, ‘would you come see the same train layout every year,’” he said. “Most people go, ‘I haven’t really thought of it, but I’d come see it again,’ well, they’re going to come see something different.”
Balthis said the train garden serves as a way to bring the community and the fire department together.
“You [have] interaction with the firehouse that gets firefighters, Boy Scouts, train garden volunteers and the community interacting, but you also have the benefit of the toy drive where the firefighters go out into the community and hand out toys,” he said.
Cindy Drummond, of Ellicott City, her husband, Kyle, and her son, Nico, 19, have served as volunteers on the train garden since before her youngest son, Benjamin, 11, was born. Now the four of them work on the garden every holiday season as a family.
Drummond said she hopes the train garden will bring a “heart smile” to the community this holiday season.
“I hope that [the train garden] helps to share a sense of magic and wonder and the gift of what happens when a group of people dedicate themselves to create something for the community to enjoy,” she said.
The holiday train garden is open Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 6:30-8:30 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Admission is free, but donations are accepted.
For more information, call 410-313-2036 or visit ellicottcityvfa.com.
