The world's largest model airport opened yesterday at the Miniatur Wunderland model rail attraction in Hamburg, Germany. Miniatur Wunderland is the world's largest H0 scale model rail landscape, and its airport has finally opened to operations, after six years of design and construction.
Busy road, with a goods train crossing the street.
A huge projectMiniatur Wunderland claims to be the largest attraction of its kind in the world, with some 12km (7.5 miles) of HO scale track and nearly nine HUNDRED trains! And the numbers keep growing - by 2020, the target is to have around 20 km (12.4 miles) of track and 1300 trains! The stats are extraordinary, and you can only get a real idea of the sheer complexity of the place by visiting the website, then maybe following up with a trip to Hamburg to check the amazingness of the whole thing.
Police force track down and arrest a criminal gang.
Busy Las Vegas highway after dark.
To give you a fix, try these numbers, gathered last summer - 200,000 H0 scale figures, 300,000 lights, 3500 buildings and bridges, 900 signals - and all run by a system of 40 computers.
Bed or burger? Luxor Hotel and Hard Rock Rock Cafe.
Have a look at the video we ran of the project back in 2009, which has so far taken more than half a million person-hours to build and had more than 5 million visitors.
View the video here.
Visit Miniatur Wunderland here.
Look at H0 model trains here.
Pictures courtesy Miniatur Wunderland and Active Magazin.