Anton Urbić, also known as Backo, was only 5 years old when his father, in the 60-ies of the last century, brought one Märklin train from Switzerland. Immediately he was fascinated by how realistic these models are compared to real trains. At first he was only allowed to watch Dad drive the trains, but eventually started to get involved himself. This expanded his fondness for trains, which later grew into true love towards trains and modeling.
When he gathered enough trains, rails and other necessary components, he began building the first model. In the beginning it was small, but it kept growing until he occupied the whole attic of the house in which he lives. Great help initially was given to him by Karlo Paladin who converted his ideas (along with a number of adjustments) in WINTRACK – the world’s leading computer program for planning schedules and looks of the railways on the model.
Over time, an idea of creating one even larger model that could be shown to visitors was born. When he got the opportunity, he moved the existing model from the attic in a room in Gundulićeva 4. There, on the 1 October 2011 Marin Benkus, Domagoj Terzić and him started working on a large scale model, which is now considered the largest in Southeast Europe. In addition to these three, a great contribution to the development of the model was given by Želimir Matočec and Ivan Žubrinić. Occasionally they were helped by Matija Bulat and Hrvoje Terzic. Very important work was carried out by Peter Jirka from Vienna, who configured WIN-DIGIPET, a program for automatic running of trains.
