We decided to have a spare day in Hamburg just in case we needed to go back to Miniatur Wunderland. I overslept! We decided to take the Harbor Tour which was arranged through the hotel. It was an easy ride down to the landing stage and the tour went off very well indeed. We passed a couple of large floating dry docks and some enormous container ships. We came back through a WHO designated site which includes a number of museums as well as Miniatur Wunderland as well as the new concert hall and a lot of expensive apartment buildings.
We took advantage of our local transport pass to visit Hamburg Altona which is the end and the beginning of all long distance trains in Hamburg. It is a stub end station which is quite busy.
Sequence of an empty train being brought into Hamburg Altona by a diesel switcher and then being taken out towards Prague by a Czech Vectron electric locomotive
We were both feeling tired and came back to the hotel to rest.
Miniatur Wunderland was the only reason for our traveling all the way to Hamburg and we had arranged to spend all day there if necessary. Our entry tickets were for 0830-0930 but we arrived at 0805 and were let in straight away. It was not busy at this time and we made our way straight to the top floor starting in USA and Scandinavia and working our way through Hamburg, Middle Germany, Knuffingem and Knuffingen Airport with a short break for a drink.
Dolphins swimming in the harbor
I had arranged for a behind the scenes tour in English for 1340 and by 1300 it became evident that we weren't going to be able to finish the top floor before the tour. We had a quick bite then took the tour. After this we finished Austria and Switzerland then descended to the 3rd floor for Switzderlnd, Italy and Venice.
After this we revisited Switzerland, had a cup of coffee and called it a day. We left around 1730.
It is impossible to describe my thoughts. It is much more than a model railway as the scenery is magnificent and the highway movements are impressive. The use of LEDs is impressive, have several hundred thousand there and they add to the impact. There are a tremendous number of small cameos which add tremendously to the impact. There must be millions of small figures.
The behind the scenes tour was given by Bernardette who spoke good English but who also knew the operation. She has worked there for may years and has participated in many projects. Putting people in passenger cars involves cutting off lots of legs and we joked about what you do with the legs.
Although this started as a model railway by most popular now is the Knuffingen Airport where you can see the whole operation from a plane landing and taxiing to the gate, the pull back, taxiing back out and take off. We were privileged to see this close up and also had a close up look at the ships being manoeuvred around the port.
Air Canada landed technically 25 minutes early at Frankfurt but after taxiing around and the bus into the terminal I arrived just about on the advertised. Customs and Immigration was quick and with just a carry on bag I had lots of time to wait for my train to Hamburg. Just about everything on the railway was running late and we managed to lose ten minutes between the Frankfurt airport and the Hauptbahnhof. We managed to lose more time all the way along except for the miracle of recovery time inserted into the timetable at the approach to Hamburg so that we arrived right on time. DB platform work is very sloppy.
The journey was long and boring and the countryside looks dry and parched. I checked into the hotel which is very close to the station.
I heard from Paul this morning before he left St. Pancras for Amsterdam but I hadn't heard anything else. I am not sure whether the DB regional trains have wi-fi like the ICEs do.
Paul finally arrived in Hamburg several hours late. He got from London to Osnabruck via Amsterdam as planned but DB had a lot of problems with trains being cancelled and running late.
