Medicine has been a fine career for Ted Niznik, a 63-year-old family practitioner from Essex. But he'd rather shovel coal.
Dr. Niznik has always loved trains -- their might, their size, the way they animate Baltimore's landscape. When he retires next year, he plans to trade in his lab coat for a pair of overalls and finish earning his engineer's license. Then nirvana: He'll get into the cab of one of the majestic steam engines that still run at the B&O Railroad Museum and drive it down the museum's historic 1 1/4 -mile track.
Baltimore is filled with ardent train buffs such as Dr. Niznik. And the city's railroad mania is never more deliriously evident than at Christmastime, when thousands of people flock to firehouses, museums and malls to view that unique Baltimore tradition, the Christmas garden.
In these make-believe worlds, our imaginations run with miniature trains around papier-mache mountains, over trestles, through tunnels and around town and country where fires blaze, dinosaurs clash, and dancers engage in an eternal pas de deux.
"In cities I've worked in from New England to Atlanta, there are other Christmas traditions. But this is the only town where train gardens take such a commanding presence. It's something everyone's aware of," says John Ott, director of the B&O museum in West Baltimore.
The Christmas garden ritual dates from the late 19th century, when a wave of German immigrants arrived in Baltimore. They brought with them their precious train sets, complete with fragile figurines, trees and cottages. They have become a local art form here, spawning such craftsman as the legendary Paul "Spike" Piker.
The laconic Mr. Piker is president of the Wise Avenue Volunteer Fire Company in Dundalk -- a fire company famous for its #F fantastical train garden. He is also the genius behind Spike's Wonderland of Animation, a company of one renowned for its mechanical Christmas garden gizmos that re-create scenes such burning houses, women hanging the wash and house painters wielding brushes. His creations, which he advertises in a national collectors' magazine, can be found in private and public train displays all over the country.
'A great train town'
Christmas gardens, however, are but a seasonal example of the year-round Baltimore passion for trains, from the mighty iron horses themselves, to Z-gauge model trains, tiny enough to fit comfortably in an attache case.
