There’s a crazy little town called Northlandz about 75 minutes outside of NYC, but you’ve probably never heard of it.
In fact, most people drive by without noticing it, even though the town is nestled in a mountain range, has several rivers, about 400 bridges and trestles, 3,000 buildings, and town centers teeming with people.
Photo Credit: The Telegraph
Perhaps that’s because the entire town fits inside of a four-story building.
Photo Credit: The Telegraph
Northlandz is North America’s largest train installation, according to their website.
Photo Credit: The Telegraph
The 52,000 square-foot installation houses over eight miles of track and a visitor’s walkway that’s nearly a mile long just to take in up to 100 trains that run at any given time.
Photo Credit: The Telegraph
An extremely complicated installation, to say the least.
Photo Credit: Some Kind of Quest
The project began as a labor of love for Bruce Williams Zaccagnino and his wife decades ago in 1972.
He says on the website, “This is what we do. If you can create your own enthusiasm, you can do anything. If you maintain that enthusiasm you can do it well.”
Photo Credit: Some Kind of Quest
But the attraction, which also boasts an on-site concert organ with 2,000 pipes that Zaccagnino plays in their Beaux Arts theater and a doll museum with a 96-room dollhouse, has never managed more than 2,100 guests in a single day. And Mr. Zaccagnino’s wife passed on over a decade ago.
The producers of a documentary about Northlandz called “Some Kind of Quest” found that he now spends more time on upkeep than he does creating, since the business doesn’t bring in enough to hire the help he needs.
Photo Credit: Some Kind of Quest
Check out the entire documentary below:
Some Kind Of Quest from Andrew Wilcox on Vimeo.
Pretty cool, huh?
Maybe next time you’re in New York, you could stop by and help keep this place alive.
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