The annual “Holiday Train Show,’’ in New York City makes you feel a little like an alien visitor just coming ashore; everything familiar is skewed and strange in the fragrant, humid air.

A train passing by The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.

This train is made from willow, canella berries, pine bark and walnut shells. The train  runs under the Washington Arch.

Foreground, from left: Saks Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, including the G.E. Building, Radio City Music Hall and the Flatiron Building.

Father and daughter,  from Pennsylvania, watched a train on the Brooklyn Bridge. The Manhattan Bridge was made of oak, hickory and elm, with willow branches, while the Brooklyn Bridge, whose neo-Gothic arches are lined with sugar-pine-cone scales.

Old New York townhouses.

Visitors watched a train on the Manhattan Bridge. While looking at this exhibition you will understand that trains became objects of play, subjects for romance. That may be why they seem so comfortable weaving around this show’s botanical urban world.