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  • (uplifting orchestral music)

  • - Ralph Waldo Emerson once quoted that,

  • "Nothing great can ever be achieved without enthusiasm."

  • Might have a lot of enthusiasm.

  • This is Northlandz in Flemington, New Jersey.

  • Northlandz is the world's largest model railroad.

  • Well, I guess, you know, everybody has a passion for something.

  • My thing was trains.

  • I had trains around the Christmas tree as a kid.

  • Wherever I lived, I'm planning track plans,

  • and then over 18 years I added five basements

  • onto the house.

  • And from that I got fairly good at making mountains,

  • and bridges, and design work.

  • And we decided to give it to the world,

  • so we tore it all down,

  • bought this land, built Northlandz.

  • Any given day we run between 85 and 90 trains.

  • Some of the details in Northlandz inside,

  • about 40,000 feet of track,

  • 'bout 4,000 buildings,

  • over 400 bridges.

  • Many of the mountains in here are 3 1/2 stories high.

  • Most things in here are scratch built.

  • Underneath the entire super structure there's enough lumber

  • to build about 42 large houses.

  • Takes a few hours to go through

  • for the average person to see everything.

  • We went millions into debt to build this place.

  • Everybody thought we were nuts.

  • And the only one that believed

  • in what I wanted to do was my wife,

  • and she was totally with me on this big time.

  • It's an artistic endeavor.

  • It's a gift to the world of what I can do,

  • and it makes a lot of people happy.

(uplifting orchestral music)

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