Northlandz

File this one under, “That’s incredible!”

From the street, Northlandz in Flemington looks like a big, nondescript banquet hall. Inside, it’s no less than the culmination of one man’s unlikely dream: to construct the world’s largest model train exhibit.

According to Northlandz lore, starting in the early 1990s, computer entrepreneur Bruce William Zaccagnino spent five years and up to 19 hours a day building this mammoth display.

More than 100 miniature electric trains chug along eight miles of track, through 200-plus tunnels and across 400 balsa-wood bridges. They travel through a landscape crowded with cities and small towns, logging camps and steelyards, fairgrounds and resort villages. Some settings are snow-covered, others fixed in a blaze of autumn glory. Still more showcase trains in motion at night, and during thunderstorms.

Zaccagnino used about 300,000 pounds of plaster to sculpt craggy mountains and deep canyons, some 30 feet high, bisected by rivers, lakes, and streams.

He also invented quirky little storylines to engage viewers: one scenario depicts a train wreck, complete with rail cars dangling precariously from a high overpass (according to the display placard, all survived). Another shows a hobo graveyard, where nameless rail riders ended their days (clearly here, no one survived). A third tells how Grandma, a recurring character in these vignettes, got even with quarry workers who knocked out her plumbing by building an outhouse over the construction site, thereby “getting her revenge.”

It takes at least an hour to complete the self-guided tour, but you could spend a week in here and not see everything. The exhibit features many items not directly related to railroad history, like a display case with figures of Elvis and Liberace, and another with celebrity dolls: Marilyn Monroe, Mae West, and Groucho Marx, among others.

There’s a lot of World War II memorabilia: uniforms, newspapers, photos, and GI gear. One long hallway houses an intricate 94-room dollhouse that spans an entire wall. There’s even a larger-scale replica of downtown Scranton, Pennsylvania, of all places.

Apparently, Zaccagnino was an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink kind of guy, who threw in anything that caught his fancy, with trains as the centerpiece. From end to end, the experience is funny, bizarre, unexpected, and oddly endearing.

It’s interactive, too. At one point in your journey, you’ll see a trio of aliens peering down from a high shelf; press the button, and they’ll sing. Other buttons light tiny Christmas trees, activate ski lifts, summon miniature police cruisers, or start the party at a beer garden.

Northlandz began as a pastime in Zaccagnino’s basement. As the train set grew—and grew—he wisely chose to relocate it, and then share it with the world. It opened as a year-round attraction in 1996, and for a time held the Guinness World Record title of largest model railroad display in the world. It has since been displaced by the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Germany, but that doesn’t take away from the Flemington attraction, which my friend compared to Ripley’s Believe it or Not.

I attempted to schedule an interview with Northlandz’ quirky creator, now 80 years old, to no avail. But according to a 2017 interview with the New York Post, his fascination with rail travel originated in boyhood, and he built this gigantic exhibition despite having never boarded a train.

“No desire, I guess,” he told the Post. “The real love is the engineering and the artistry.”

He called himself “a worker … who has to create.” He willingly spent several million dollars building this small world, despite the skepticism of everyone but his wife, Jean. Just one small section of the exhibit, called Joycetown, took 900 hours to construct. Again—that’s incredible!

Open seven days a week, Northlandz has a big gift shop and several party rooms. It also offers woodland rides aboard an 1890s replica narrow-gauge steam train, which chugs along the Southern Raritan River.

As a matter of fact, only a few guests were there during our stay, but the place is busier on weekends and around the holidays. It’s been visited by luminaries including Rod Stewart, himself a big train buff.

Now, about getting there: Northlandz is in Hunterdon County, almost a straight shot up the Garden State Parkway. But that route takes you in range of New York City traffic, with a gazillion lanes of impatient, competitive drivers. My friend and I traveled up on the GSP, but for the sake of our sanity, took the leisurely ride back, through the countryside on Route 206, stopping in beautiful Lambertville for lunch.

For train enthusiasts, clearly Northlandz is a must-see. But model railways have nostalgic appeal for many Americans. During my time there, I felt transported back to my childhood home, especially at Christmastime, when the trains came out of storage to travel around the tree.

It was offbeat. It was outlandish. It was incredible.