Planes, Trains and Automobiles…and more trains: Hamburg’s Miniatur Wunderland
When I was a kid my parents would always take me to the New York Botanical Gardens Train show. There, model trains would drive through plants and flowers and pass models of some of New York’s most famous landmarks. I loved it, but I was always a bigger fan of the trains than the plants. When I saw that Hamburg had an exhibit of model trains, I thought I would check it out, but it was so much more than I could have imagined.
Tucked away in a warehouse in Hamburg lies the longest model railways track in the world. The Miniatur Wunderland has 16 kilometers of model train track for over 1000 HO (1:87) scale trains (Miniatur Wunderland, n.d.) There are multiple sections over two floors covering multiple regions in Germany, Europe, the Americas and even Antarctica.
I started at the US exhibit. I was expecting maybe a section of New York or California, but much of the exhibit was actually of Las Vegas, so I guess that’s what the Hamburgers think of us.
Alongside Las Vegas are some other important locations such as Mount Rushmore, the Grand Canyon, and the Kennedy Space Center, complete with a launching rocket.
The exhibits are fun and full of small details. As you move through, there are buttons you can press to make certain events happen, from small things like starting a performance at the Hamburg Opera House or bigger events like making Mt. Vesuvius erupt over a model of Pompeii. Some events, like the eruption, can only be done at “night”, which is roughly every 5 minutes.
Throughout you can see small little vignettes of people going through their lives in miniature. A taxi man jump starts his car, a woman takes a drive with her dog. Even beneath the exhibits things are happening, such as bank robbers tunneling through into an underground safe.
In the Hamburg section, you can even see a miniature Wunderland, with its own little trains.
It’s not just trains either. The Scandinavia exhibit showcases 30,000 liters of water, with ships that actually sail through it, and a tide that ebbs and flows (Miniatur Wunderland, n.d.).
Probably my favorite section was Knuffingen Airport, based on Hamburg International Airport, it is a fully functional airport with takeoffs, landings, taxiing and airplane service. When a plane lands, it taxis to its gate, refuels and takes off again.
I sat at this exhibit for almost a quarter of the time I was at the Wunderland. It was a logistical masterpiece, truely like a real airport. I spent plenty of time waiting to see some of my favorite planes take off before I realized…
There is a real-time list of takeoffs and departures. Yes, this includes the Millenium Falcon, which I made sure I saw taking off.
The airport also fully functions at night, and the planes have lights on them as well. Here is an Airbus BelugaXL taking off at night.
The BelugaXL goes to a separate section of the airport for cargo planes, where I saw it carrying a fuselage.
Technologically the planes are also complex, the exhibit didn’t go into too much detail about how they worked, but it did show an example.
Can’t really say I know what’s happening.
The Wunderland’s most complex and one of its newest exhibits is a fully-functional model of the Monaco Grand Prix. This was the most crowded area, and for good reason. Moved by magnets under the track, all 20 F1 Cars zip through the streets of Monaco. The best part is that every race is different. The cars are not programmed to run a certain path, there are overtakes, passes and even sometimes crashes. In the race I watched, the winner was Lando Norris followed by Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen. Above the exhibit are TV screens with cameras so you can watch the cars drive around at their level.
The entire Wunderland is monitored by workers at a central room, which is observable by the public. I’m not sure what’s going on in this photo, but you can see there are tons of sensors and cameras monitoring the tracks in case something goes wrong. One incident (cleverly labelled as a yellow flag) on the Monaco track caused a worker to come over and reset the cars.
The Wunderland, despite its scale, is an artistic, technological and logistical masterpiece in Hamburg. It is suitable for all ages and was by far my favorite thing to see in the city. It is impossible for me to show everything that I saw there, but I cannot recommend this more if you plan on taking a visit. If you do go, be sure to book your tickets online. It’s hard to avoid the crowds, but I went from 6-9pm and it was manageable. If you really want to avoid the kids, it is open until 1 in the morning. The Wunderland is always expanding and I would definitely go again in the future to see what else they have made by then.
– Robin
Miniatur Wunderland. (n.d.). Facts & figures. https://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/discover-wunderland/technologies/model-railway/facts-figures/
Miniatur Wunderland. (n.d.). The ship control system. https://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/discover-wunderland/technologies/ship-control-system/
