Christmas trains

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Michael Kernbauch couldn't imagine putting up a Christmas tree without displaying a toy train beneath it. As a father of three children, Mr. Kernbauch, 49, carries on the tradition that he experienced in his youth.

This year, his tannenbaum stands in the family room of his Clifton home with a LGB locomotive leading the cars on the train track. The locomotive sounds a whistle and gives off a pine scent.

"Toy trains are something that carry you back to a less stressful time, to the holiday you faced as a child," Mr. Kernbauch says. "If you are 9 years old, your world is a Christmas tree and a train."

Along with mistletoe and manger scenes, Christmas trees accompanied by toy trains are popular symbols of the winter holidays. The possibilities of decorating with the miniature cars are as big as a person's pocketbook.

Oral tradition says that the "train gardens" began in Maryland in the 1900s, says Ed Williams, deputy director and chief curator at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore.

"It's mostly in the Maryland region that they are called 'train gardens,' " Mr. Williams says. "Some people expect to see flowers and bushes, but it's trees and trains."

When settlers came to America, a large group of German immigrants made their homes in Maryland, Mr. Williams says. During Christmas, the German natives would build little houses to replicate the villages from which they came in Europe. These communities would be placed under their Christmas trees.

According to legend, decorating trees is a German tradition started by Protestant reformer, Martin Luther. He supposedly placed candles on the branches of evergreens, as a symbol of Christ, "the light of the world," Mr. Williams says.

Trains had been pull-toys since at least 1830. Then, in 1901, Joshua Lionel Cowen created the first electric toy train, which German immigrants added as components under their evergreens.

Mr. Cowen was a store window designer in New York City. He put a battery in a toy train and made it run in a window to draw attention to a jewelry display.