Chicago Botanic Garden Spring 2019

14 chicagobotanic.org Engineers celebrate 20 years of keeping the trains running The Model Railroad Garden: Landmarks of America is one of the Chicago Botanic Garden’s most popular exhibitions. But it had a very modest start as a Ju- nior Railroad Exhibit, with seven trains traveling a temporary lay- out around a profusion of plants. Now celebrating its 20th anniver- sary, the Model Railroad has more than 1,600 feet of track with 18 trains navigating past almost 50 miniature American landmarks in miniature. Making it all work are the train exhibi- tion engineers. You should be able to spot them easily enough—they usually wear a blue denim shirt, dark pants, and an engineer’s hat with its classic pleated crown. And they possess a life- long love of model railroads that they share with the youngest visitors. Perhaps Dick Jacobs, Lynn Sirovatka, or Dave Perez will be there, keeping tabs on the G-scale trains that navigate the 18 tracks through 7,500 square feet of plants and across 26 bridges. ey and chief train exhibition engineer Steve Kocian are among the 15 or so engineers who care for the railroad. Or you may see Dave Rodelius. He was the Model Railroad Garden’s rst chief engineer until he retired last year. Hired to drive a Garden tram, he soon spot- ted garden specialists from Applied Imagination in Alexandria, Kentucky, installing the railroad and chatted with its founder Paul Busse. Not long after that, Rodelius was o ered a chance to manage the railroad. He then tapped seven hobbyists from the model rail- road industry to work that rst year. Dave Rodelius was the Model Railroad Garden’s rst engineer.