An elevated train runs adjacent to Yankee Stadium. No, it is not the 4 train, but Thomas the Tank Engine chugging around a circular loop, situated above a wood-and-fungus recreation of the old Yankee Stadium.

This surreal model of the west Bronx can be found at the New York Botanical Garden’s 27th Annual Holiday Train Show inside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. The show runs through Jan. 21, but the Norwood News was invited to a media preview on Nov. 13.

Ranging from well-known landmarks and historic structures across the city to row houses in Washington Heights, over 150 buildings, bridges and monuments are crafted from forest debris and constructed by artisans who specialize in this very specific genre of agriculture art.

Beginning in 1992, Applied Imagination, a Kentucky-based company that produces garden railroads and “botanical architecture,” set up the first Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanical Garden. Since then, the company has returned every year with new ideas and new structures made of nuts, bark, seeds and other debris from Kentucky and the Botanical Garden itself.

The enormous and intricate exhibit takes two weeks to set up properly. At the preview event, Applied Imagination workers in striped, train-engineer suspenders (with matching cap) continued to make last-minute tweaks as media members walked through. This year, the show highlights Lower Manhattan, but includes replicas of structures from all five boroughs.

Like commuters to the real Lower Manhattan, attendees at the train show will enter the leaves-and-detritus Lower Manhattan by way of Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. Though not scale models, the structures are easily recognizable and hard to miss – both stations are larger than nearly every replica in the exhibit.

Trains run both among the base of the plants and above attendees’ heads, on replicas of New York City’s many bridges, on over half-a-mile of track, according to a Botanical Garden spokesperson. The exhibit snakes mostly through the Haupt Conservatory.

The exhibition’s finale is a replica of Lower Manhattan that includes new additions like One World Trade Center, vintage ferry models, the Woolworth Building, and the Oculus station house. The ferry models sail across a pool of water – New York Bay – towards old stalwarts of the exhibit, replicas of the Statue of Liberty and the Ellis Island Immigration Center on Ellis Island.

Other than the now-demolished old Yankee Stadium, some of the Bronx buildings that are featured in the exhibit are Riverdale Bell Tower, Van Cortlandt House, the Valentine-Varian House on Bainbridge Avenue in Norwood, the Bartow-Pell Mansion in Pelham Bay, and a massive replica of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.

The train show will be the site of many events over the course of its stay at the Botanical Garden, including several targeted at children and families. The exhibit will host family-friendly film nights, “train-inspired” educational programming.