Photos: The miniature worlds of Zagreb’s model train museum

Soaring over mountain gorges, past snowy ski slopes and into bustling stations, miniature trains chart landscapes painstakingly assembled by Antun Urbic at his model rail museum in Zagreb. The Backo Mini Express Museum is the largest of its kind in southeastern Europe and boasts more than a kilometre of tiny tracks traversing picturesque rural villages and city squares wrought in extraordinary detail. After closing doors due to Croatia’s coronavirus lockdown three month ago, the locomotives are back on track and chugging away.

Updated on: Jun 14, 2020 7:06 PM IST

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Miniature model trains layout, as part of the collection at the Backo Mini Express Museum in Zagreb, Croatia. The Backo Mini Express Museum is the largest in southeast Europe. It has more than one kilometres of rails through an imaginary rural and urban landscape of villages, mountains, roads, churches, all presented in extraordinary details. (Denis Lovrovic / AFP)

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Visitors look at a model trains layout at the Backo Mini Express Museum in Zagreb. More than 2,500 figurines including mountaineers, wedding guests, police, construction workers and commuters populate the scenes at the museum. (Denis Lovrovic / AFP)

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A young visitor leans on the railing at Backo Mini Express Museum as he looks at a model trains layout. Antun Urbic, who opened the museum in 2015, fell in love with trains 60 years ago when his father gave him a model set. (Denis Lovrovic / AFP)

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A model train crosses a tunnel in an idyllic scene at the Backo Mini Express Museum . With over 150 trains Urbic has turned his lifelong passion into an impressive model railways museum in Croatia’s capital. (Denis Lovrovic / AFP)

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Antun Urbic in the control room of his mini train museum in Zagreb. “It was the only toy that moved by itself,” the 66-year-old who goes by the nickname Backo, told AFP. He started building sets as a hobby in the attic of his Zagreb home before moving to a bigger space where he invited friends over to model with him. (Denis Lovrovic / AFP)

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After spending four years piecing together a large-scale model, Urbic opened the museum to the public. Since then, the site has attracted 25,000 people a year, including model train enthusiasts from the United States, Australia and India. (Denis Lovrovic / AFP)

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The museum reopened in May after closing for nearly three months under Croatia’s coronavirus lockdown. (Denis Lovrovic / AFP)

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A boy looks at a model train layout at the Backo Mini Express Museum . “Everyone perceives this as a children’s game but it is far from that,” said Urbic’s associate Zvonko Cebalo. “There is a concentration of knowledge -- electronic, electric, IT, robotic,” he told AFP. (Denis Lovrovic / AFP)