Miniatur Wunderland

Miniatur Wunderland (German for 'miniature wonderland') is a model railway and miniature airport attraction in Hamburg, Germany, the largest of its kind in the world. The railway is located in the historic Speicherstadt district of the city.

Miniatur Wunderland GmbH
TypeLimited liability company
(Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung)
IndustryModel railway
FoundedDecember 2000 (2000-12)
Headquarters
Hamburg, Germany
Key people
Frederik & Gerrit Braun, Stephan Hertz
Number of employees
360[1]
Websiteminiatur-wunderland.de

In October 2016 the railway consisted of 15,715 m (51,558 ft) of track in H0 scale, divided into nine sections: Harz, the fictitious city of Knuffingen, the Alps and Austria, Hamburg, America, Scandinavia, Switzerland, a replica of the Hamburg Airport and Italy. Of the 7,000 m2 (75,347 sq ft) of floorspace, the model takes 1,499 m2 (16,135 sq ft).[2]

By 2020, the exhibit is expected to have reached its final construction phase, including at least a total of ten new sections in a model area of over 2,300 m2 (24,757 sq ft).[2] The exhibit includes 1,300 trains made up of over 10,000 carriages, over 100,000 moving vehicles, ca. 500,000 lights, 130,000 trees, and 400,000 human figurines.[3] Planning is also in progress for the construction of sections for Central America and the Caribbean, Asia, England, Africa and The Netherlands.[4]

Prehistory

In the summer of 2000, Frederik Braun, one of the two founders of Miniatur Wunderland, was on vacation in Zurich. There, in a model train store, he came up with the idea for the world's largest model railroad.[5] Back in Hamburg, he searched for email addresses from the Internet and started a survey on the popularity of real and fictional sights of the city. In the process, the Miniatur Wunderland, which did not yet exist, was ranked 3 by male respondents.

According to the brothers Gerrit and Frederik Braun, the idea for the Miniatur Wunderland, including the financing plan, fit on just two pages.[6] The financial backer was the Hamburger Sparkasse.[7][8]

Construction and expansion

After construction began in December 2000, the first three sections (Knuffingen, Central Germany and Austria) went into operation on August 16, 2001. Since then, new sections have been added. With the completion of the Hamburg, German Coast section in November 2002, Wunderland became the largest model railroad in Europe. Expansions in December 2003 with the theme USA and July 2005 with Scandinavia followed. On September 10, 2015, Gerrit and Frederik Braun placed the missing piece of track between the Switzerland section and a new Italy section. In doing so, they extended the track length from 13,000 to 15,400 meters. This was recorded by a Guinness judge, who then presented the certificate for the newly established world record.[9] The 190 square meter section Bella Italia was opened on 28. September 2016 after four years of construction with 180,000 working hours and costs of around four million euros.[10] With the construction section Monaco / Provence started in August 2019, another 315 meters will be added. The total length of currently 15,715 m thus corresponds to 1,367.21 km in real length, so this is now also the largest model railway layout in the world across all scales.[11]

Sections
NumberSectionCompletionSizeSource
01Central Germany / HarzAugust 2001ca. 120 m2
02KnuffingenAugust 2001ca. 120 m2
03AustriaAugust 2001ca. 60 m2
04HamburgNovember 2002ca. 200 m2
05AmericaDecember 2003ca. 100 m2
06ScandinaviaJuly 2005ca. 300 m2
07SwitzerlandNovember 2007ca. 250 m2
08Knuffingen AirportMay 2011ca. 150 m2
04 aHamburg – subsection Hafencity
and Elbphilharmonie		November 2013ca. 9 m2
09ItalySeptember 2016ca. 190 m2
09 aItaly – Subsection VeniceFebruary 2018ca. 9 m2[12]
01 aCentral Germany / Harz – Subsection KirmesJune 2020ca. 9 m2[13]
10Monaco / Provence2021 (under construction)ca. 63 m2[14]
11South America2022 (under construction)ca. 220 m2[15]
12 The World From Above 2022 (under construction) ca. 10m2 [16]
13 Central America & The Caribbean 2024 (planned) ca. 150m2 [16]
14 Asia 2026/2027 ca. 150m2 [16]

The next stage under construction is Monaco (with Formula 1 circuit). After its completion, South America is to be represented. The new section is to be built by the end of 2021 in a neighboring building. A bridge installed on July 15, 2020 will lead to it.[17]

Other projects include Central America/Caribbean and Asia.[18]

System
The control room
View of the Hamburg section

Visitors walk back and forth between different rooms in a long corridor. Trains run along the walls of the rooms and on peninsula-like protrusions. The layout consists (as of September 2016) of nine completed sections of 60[19] to 300 m2[19] Model area:

  • The first three sections were created in parallel. They show central and southern Germany with the Harz, it also has a long ICE-high speed road.
  • The fictional town of Knuffingen was given a road system with moving cars as a special feature.
  • The Austria section involved the implementation of the Alps theme, including a multi-level helix from which trains from the other sections change corridor sides above the heads of visitors.
  • The next stage of expansion includes the section with the theme Hamburg, German Coast.
  • The USA section includes Las Vegas, Miami, some Wild West, again a system with moving cars and a spaceport.
Las Vegas in Miniatur Wunderland
  • The Scandinavia section sets the focus with a real water area: in the future, computer-controlled ships will operate in the 30,000 liter "North Sea" sea tub. At present, they are still controlled manually. Tides are also simulated here.
  • The Swiss Alps, extending over two floors, are modeled on the landscapes of the cantons of Ticino, Grisons and Wallis and were completed in November 2007. Through a ceiling breakthrough on a total area of 100 m2, the mountains reach almost six meters in height. Visitors reach this new level via stairs, while trains negotiate the height differences in concealed switchbacks and in a locomotive lift.
  • The Knuffingen Airport section was opened in May 2011 after around six years of construction and development and an investment of 3.5 million euros. On display is a 150 m2 airport with a globally unique airport control system.
  • A small section forms the Hamburg HafenCity with the Elbphilharmonie. Planning began in May 2012 and construction began in August of the same year. A total of nine square meters (m2) were available, and 10 selected houses were built on this area. The opening was on November 13, 2013.[20]
  • In 2014, a trip was made to Italy to collect many impressions of the country. These were brought into the 9th construction section Italy. In this section, some sights of Rome as well as landscapes like Tuscany or the lava-spewing Vesuvius can be seen. The construction section was presented in a specially created blog and opened in September 2016.[21]
  • In February 2018, the section Venice was opened with only 9 m2. With about 35,000 hours of work, it is the most elaborate section – in relation to its size.

Special features

Special features include a simulated daily routine where twilight, night and day repeat every 15 minutes. This includes an automatic lighting control system that switches more than 300,000 lights to match the time of day.

The 120-square-meter fantasy town of Knuffingen, with a population of about 6,000, is equipped with more than 100 moving model cars, including numerous fire engines, which are used to simulate a firefighting operation in Knuffingen every 15 minutes on average. Traffic simulation is made possible by a modified car system that is also used in the USA, Scandinavia and Knuffingen Airport sections. In the America section, even an Interstate Highway is equipped with a dynamic Traffic Control System, which controls traffic through four different speed limits as well as permanent light signs and a variable text display.[22]

The layout is considered to be rich in detail, examples include a changing scoreboard in the Volkspark Stadium or a crashed cheese wheel truck. There is also a Jet gas station there, displaying the real current gasoline prices of its prototype in Hamburg's Amsinck street.[23]

Visitors can control operations on the system through ca. 200 pushbuttons. These button actions are a highlight for many visitors. For example, a mine train starts, wind turbines turn, the next goal falls in the football stadium, a space shuttle takes off, a helicopter takes off or Pinocchio's Nose begins to grow. A push button even allows visitors to watch the simulated production of a small bar of chocolate in a factory and taste the real product for themselves.[24]

Certain tours also include a behind-the-scenes look at detailed figures that cannot be seen from the normal public area.

Knuffingen Airport
View over Knuffingen airport

After six years of planning and construction, the model airport "Knuffingen Airport" was officially opened to visitors on May 4, 2011 as a special section of the facility. Its buildings resemble the Hamburg Airport. As in the fictional main town of Knuffingen, there is also a simulation of a fire department with a large fleet of vehicles, including four airfield fire engines. On the 14 meter long runway, aircraft models can be accelerated to scale realistically on an invisible sled, and by means of two guide rods can also seemingly lift off the ground and disappear into a (cloud) wall. Depending on the launch phase, the guide rods allow a horizontal tilt of the aircraft that approximates reality.

To be found here are a wide variety of common commercial aircraft including Boeing 747 and Airbus A380, in the liveries of many airlines around the world. Even models of the still relatively new Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 "Dreamliner" aircraft take off and land at Knuffingen. There is also a Concorde in British Airways livery, a Space Shuttle, a bee and the "Millennium Falcon" spaceship known from Star Wars.

The movement of the aircraft on the ground is realized with the help of technology based on the Car system. The vehicles in the airport tell their own little stories with coordinated refueling, loading and unloading before and after landing starting from the aircraft parking positions.

Unlike the other landscapes, the railroad at the airport is hardly visible. There is only an airport station underground.

According to the operators, the 150-square-meter space has cost around 3.5 million euros, in addition to 150,000 man-hours. The area is equipped not only with many rolling aircraft models, but also with hundreds of cars, passenger boarding bridges, parking garages, airport hotels, a subway and individual figures.

Visitors

On December 5, 2012, the ten millionth visitor came to Miniatur Wunderland,[11] on December 2, 2016 the fifteen millionth.[25] Around three quarters of visitors come from Germany, the remaining quarter from abroad, mainly from Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, England, the US and China.[26]

Awards

In 2010, company founders Frederik and Gerrit Braun and Stephan Hertz were awarded the Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for their social commitment.[27]

Presence in the media
Switzerland
Real water with moving ships in Scandinavia

Several times after completion of the various expansion stages, the Hamburg were visited by a team of reporters of the Eisenbahn-Romantik from SWR. They were also granted a look behind the scenes. Numerous television stations, magazines and newspapers have already reported on the Miniatur Wunderland.

In May 2009, rapper Samy Deluxe filmed the video clip for his socially critical song Stumm in Miniatur Wunderland. Within just one night, about 100 sequences were recorded in which a miniature figure "runs" (stop-motion) through the layout.[28]

On December 5, 2009, the outdoor betting of the television show Wetten, dass..? took place at Miniatur Wunderland.[29]

The plot of several episodes of the Hamburg crime series Großstadtrevier played in the Miniatur Wunderland.[8]

In 2015, together with the singer Helene Fischer, a campaign for Ein Herz für Kinder was launched, in which over 450,000 euros (as of 01/2016) were collected. The campaign was presented, among others, in the Ein Herz für Kinder Gala.[30]

In January 2016, Miniatur Wunderland partnered with Google MiniView – a miniature version of Google Street View.[31]

  • View of the Hamburg section
  • Ships sailing in real water in the Scandinavia layout
  • A football stadium based on Volksparkstadion
  • Las Vegas Strip night scene
  • In The Alps
  • Railway bridge
  • Railway in Norway
  • Rome in the Italy section
  • Venice model under construction

See also

References
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  2. "Wunderland Facts – The Wunderland in Numbers". Archived from the original on 2018-02-07. Retrieved 2020-06-16.
  3. "Live Like A German". Toy Train Exhibition (Miniatur Wunderland). Archived from the original on 29 October 2019. Retrieved 24 December 2017.
  4. "The Future of Wunderland – Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg". Archived from the original on 2020-07-05. Retrieved 2020-06-16.
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