The Living Desert's Model Train Display

The Living Desert, located in Palm Deserts, California, is a botanical garden, a natural history museum, a wilderness park, a conservation center and a desert all wrapped up into one. And if you are a train aficionado, then you may already know about their wonderful model train display. If you take a short walk past the theatre, you will discover American history as seen by the train.

The display has several distinct regions to include the Rocky Mountains, Old Indio, the European Swiss Alps, the Grand Canyon featuring the El Tovar Hotel, Mount Rushmore, southwest cliff dwellings, and a California logging and mining town with five interconnected layouts.

The LGB train display covers more than an acre of land with over 2300 hundred feet of track. It has the world's longest wooden trestle at 202 feet. The initials LGB derive from the name of Lehmann Gross Bahn. The trains are a G scale set, which is one of the most popular sizes for model trains. They have at least seven trains running at any given time and they run on Direct Current (DC) ranging from 0 to 18 volts.

I was impressed by fine details of the trees, the bridges, the Grand Canyon, and the numerous waterways and waterfalls built in and around the whole display. A lot of detail was placed into making this exhibit. I thoroughly enjoyed the visit so much that I took my son to a Hobby Town store just to look at train sets. As a child, I was always fascinated with trains and although I didn't buy a set, I found a few ideas for future Christmas and birthday presents for my son. Maybe one day he can build his own model train display.

The Living Desert started their train display as an annual holiday lights program in 1998, but due to its popularity, turned it into full time display during peak seasons. The employees and the many volunteer train enthusiasts helped build it. They also have a program where you can adopt a train, name a building, a train car, add a bill board message and more. You can find more information by logging into their website.