(CNN) — There is the low rumble of a plane landing and the hum of an engine. Bags are loaded onto planes. In the terminal, people sip coffee, wait for their flight and reunite with loved ones on arrival.
Emirates’ A380 prepares for take-off, accelerating before soaring into the clouds. Crowds of onlookers gasp in delight as the superjumbo disappears from sight.
No, they’re not plane spotters — or at least not in the traditional sense, because this isn’t a real airport. Airplanes are fake. The clouds are painted. The airport is only 1,614 square feet.
Welcome to Miniature Wonderland. This is the world’s largest model railway, home not only to a working miniature airport, but also to miniature replicas of some of the world’s most popular destinations: Venice, Machu Picchu and Las Vegas, to name a few.
Spread over several floors in an old warehouse building in Hamburg, Germany, Miniatur Wunderland is a marvel of engineering and one of the German city’s most popular tourist attractions.
Its crown jewel is its airport — a painstaking recreation of a real Hamburg traffic hub, complete with 52 moving aircraft, carefully painted in colors to match their larger real-life counterparts.
Miniatur Wunderland is the vision of twin brothers Frederik Braun and Gerrit Braun. Once upon a time, the couple ran a nightclub, but a childhood spent playing with model trains planted the seed of an idea that returned to Frederik in 2000.
Frederik recalls calling his brother and telling him, “I have the best idea.”
“We had a childhood dream of building a very large model of the world, but we forgot that dream when we were 15 or 16 — girls, cars and everything else came into our lives,” Gerrit tells CNN Travel.
As soon as Frederik said the words out loud, this childhood vision came back to Gerrit.
“It took a few seconds. All the images from our childhood — and what we might be doing today — came to mind,” he says. “And these pictures didn’t stand still. It was movement. It was life. Lights that went on and off, trains that sped by, planes that moved and flew…”
Within weeks, the brothers were sketching out ideas. In a few months, they signed a lease agreement for a building in Hamburg’s port district.
Frederik and Gerrit were convinced that the idea had legs. But there were many who were skeptics.
“Many, many people around me told me, ‘No, that can’t work. Model trains? That’s for old people,'” says Frederik.
But Miniatur Wunderland had huge appeal, becoming a word-of-mouth hit when it opened in August 2000.
“It is an exhibition for the whole family, for every person, from one to 100 years old, women, men, there is no difference,” says Frederik.
Designing a mini version of our world
Designing a mini version of our world
For brothers Frederik and Gerrit Braun, creating a miniature wonderland was a dream come true. On the same subject : The TSA prepared to travel in the summer from San Antonio International Airport.
Before opening the doors to Miniatur Wunderland, Frederik, Gerrit and their third co-founder, friend Stephan Hertz, sat down and made a list of all the scenes they would like to see played out in miniature form.
The next step was to find a model builder who could help them bring their dream to life. An internet search led them to skilled German modeler Gerhard Dauscher.
Dauscher initially declined the opportunity as he was fully occupied with work for the next two years.
“Two days later he called me,” recalls Frederik. Dauschler couldn’t shake that idea from his head. He changed his schedule and joined the team.
Speaking to CNN Travel today, Dauscher says Miniatur Wunderland appealed to his longtime love of railroads. He was also excited about the possibility of creating fantastical versions of our reality.
In the two decades since then, the Miniatur Wunderland team has grown to more than 250 employees, including a skilled team of model builders who are constantly coming up with new ways to delight and delight visitors.
“Everyone has built some part of the schedule, everyone feels that a piece of [them], [their] heart, is in the schedule,” Dauscher says.
There are also electricians and a team of technicians who monitor daily events from the internal control room.
Frederik and Gerrit’s younger brother Sebastian Drechsler is also on board. Drechsler is more than a decade younger than the twins and says he spent most of his childhood accidentally destroying his older brothers’ model railroads.
Today, Drechsler is in charge of Miniatur Wunderland’s marketing. Meanwhile, Frederik is a dreamer and Gerrit is a doer.
“Freddy always had big ideas, and I always had the solutions to realize those ideas,” says Gerrit.
Building a model airport
The airport in Miniatur Wunderland is a recreation of the real Hamburg airport. Read also : Traveling on July 4th: departure time and other driving tips.
Perhaps Frederik’s most ambitious idea was the Miniatur Wunderland Airport, which opened in 2011. This expansion took nearly six years to build and cost €400,000 (about $400,150). The finished result includes 62 miles of wires, 75 buildings and 40,000 LED lights.
Unlike most of the landscapes in Miniatur Wunderland, which are approximations of their real counterparts, the airport is an exact copy of the real Hamburg aviation hub.
Gerrit explains that this is partly because it was easier to copy the layout of the airport and then scale it down than it would have been “to learn everything about the planes, how they move on the ground, what spaces they need.”
Gerrit spent four months regularly visiting Hamburg Airport, talking to workers and taking thousands of photos to serve as inspiration.
Creating realistic aircraft and simulating takeoffs and landings were a key focus, but Gerrit also spoke to airport firefighters, airport cleaners and the aircraft de-icing team.
“We wanted it to have a real airport atmosphere,” explains model builder Dauscher. This meant recreating every aspect of the traffic hub.
When CNN Travel visited the attraction, there was a “fire” at the airport and the airport’s fire engines rushed in — all part of the simulation, of course, but it was momentarily disconcerting to see the plane go up in smoke.
The airport includes a detailed recreation of the terminal building.
Miniatur Wunderland aircraft range from A380s to private Cessna jets, and are designed to take off and land in a way that feels as “real” as possible.
“They drive to the runway, and two pipes come out from under the structure, lift the plane and give it speed. It’s very complicated, technically,” explains Dauscher.
Much of the action at Miniatur Wunderland, including the takeoff and landing of airplanes and the regular changing of lighting to simulate the change from day to night, is automated.
Dauscher explains that technicians in the control room are mostly focused on checking — and then fixing — any errors. The most common cause of errors? Powder.
“The more dust we have on the surface, the trains don’t run, the planes don’t fly,” says Dauscher.
More than a decade since it was launched, the airport remains the highlight of Miniatur Wunderland. The only problem, says Gerrit, is that whenever something changes at Hamburg Airport — even if it’s just the location of the taxi rank — the team feels pressure to change its model to match.
The Miniatur Wunderland team wants to delight and delight visitors with their detailed creations.
However, nothing in Miniatur Wunderland is static – it is an ever-evolving attraction.
The expansion of Miniatur Wunderland South America continues to grow and should be completed in the next five years with the addition of a small Amazon rainforest and the Andes mountain range. Miniatur Wunderland also plans to expand into another building to help with future growth.
In addition to holding the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest model railway and the world’s largest model airport, Miniatur Wunderland also set a record in 2021 for the longest melody played by a model train.
Exploring worlds
The newest expansion of Miniatur Wunderland is part of South America. See the article : Amid Airport Chaos, Semi-Private Jet Travel Creates the Goldilocks Option.
Miniatur Wunderland stays open until 01:00. on certain days in the summer. When CNN Travel visited at 8:00 p.m. on a summer weekday evening, the attraction was packed with visitors pointing out the fine details and admiring the different worlds.
Gerrit suggests that the appeal of Miniature Wonderland is that it is not simply the culmination of the Braun brothers’ childhood ambitions. It is a model of the world that many of us dreamed of creating as children.
“[Visitors can] spend two or three lovely hours reminiscing about their childhood,” says Gerrit.
Certainly, a walk through the building is a pure escape from reality. The appeal lies in the mixture of whimsy and technical skill.
There are over 1,000 trains that vary in size and speed depending on location. There are also mining caves, cruise ships that cross real pools of water and a hot air balloon. And there are thousands of tiny figures and almost imperceptible levels of detail. Wherever you are in the building, there’s something exciting about seeing the world from a bird’s eye view.
It’s Frederik’s favorite part of the attraction. Standing and looking down.
“Night comes and you close your eyes for a bit, you can imagine it’s like flying through the mountains,” he says.
What is the most popular model train set?
With a gauge of 16.5 mm and a scale of 1:87, HO is the most common model train size today. Lionel has produced HO trains several times in its history.
Which is better HO scale or N scale? The advantage of N scale is that it allows hobbyists to build layouts that take up less space than HO scale, or set up longer tracks in the same amount of space, because the models are smaller (almost half) than they are in HO scale. scale (1:87).
What is the most popular model train?
Top Train Brands in the United States
- Athearn (scale HO, N)
- Atlas (scale O, HO and N)
- Arnold (N gauge, owned by Hornby)
- Bachmann (scales HO, N and G)
- Lionel (O scale trains).
- Walthers (N and HO scale)
What is the most popular model train scale size?
HO scale is the most popular scale, and in 1/87 scale it is slightly more than half the size of O scale model trains. The 16.5 mm track is the most popular of all track sizes.
Where is the biggest model railway in the world?
Miniatur Wunderland is the largest model railway system in the world and has actually been voted the most popular tourist attraction in Germany. Visitors can admire different countries and even an airport in miniature size.
Where is the largest model train museum? At 27,000 square feet, the San Diego Model Railroad Museum is the world’s largest accredited model railroad museum. This one-of-a-kind museum features five huge scale models depicting the railroads of the Southwest in O, HO and N scales.
Where is the largest model train display?
The ‘world’s largest train exhibition’ combines history with family fun. WEST CHESTER, Ohio â When it comes to historical education and fun, a train-themed family entertainment center near Cincinnati is on the right track. With 25,000 square feet of track, Entertainment Junction is the world’s largest indoor model train display.
Where is Britain’s largest model railway?
Often known as Heaton Lodge Junction, this award-winning 200ft (55m) masterpiece has been praised by the press for its stunning attention to detail, exceptional overall realism and of course, epic proportions!
Does airplane mode do?
If you have an Android phone, the process is similar – just swipe down from the top and turn on airplane mode.
What happens when someone calls you in airplane mode? These are just some of the messages you might hear if you call a cell phone number that is in airplane mode, so it’s the same as if the cell phone is turned off.
Does airplane mode actually do anything?
When you enable airplane mode, you’ll disable your phone’s ability to connect to cellular or Wi-Fi networks, or to Bluetooth. This means you can’t make or receive calls, send messages or browse the internet.
What does airplane mode do and not do?
Airplane mode is a cellular setting that turns off your phone’s connection to cellular and Wi-Fi networks. You can’t make phone calls, you can’t text your friends, and you can’t use social media during the flight.
