Northlandz, Model railroad museum in Raritan Township, United States
Northlandz is a model railroad museum featuring over eight miles of tracks that wind through mountains, bridges, and detailed scenery with more than 4,000 miniature buildings. The scenes spread across multiple indoor levels, each containing different regional landscapes and townscapes rendered at tiny scale.
Bruce Williams Zaccagnino began constructing miniature scenes in his basement in 1972, with his work eventually becoming the museum that opened to the public in 1996. What started as a personal hobby over decades transformed into one of the largest handmade railroad displays.
The displays recreate American regions with tiny buildings and landscapes, showing how railroads shaped communities from industrial towns to small villages.
The indoor walking tour covers roughly one mile and takes about three hours to complete, moving through multiple levels of continuous miniature displays. Wear comfortable shoes as you will navigate uneven surfaces and stairs connecting the different floor levels.
Building the railroad display required enough lumber to construct 42 full-size houses, along with several hundred tons of plaster for three-story-high mountain formations. These massive quantities show just how much material and craftsmanship went into creating this installation.
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