Thursday 30 August - Miniatur Wunderland

Let's jump right in

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.

For pictures on Flickr click here