We were up and out early this morning and took the U-Bahn to get to Miniature Wunderland. However we found that the gates don't open until 9 and so we had a little time to spare. The canals are quite interesting, there were a large number of tufted ducks diving while another of the canals we passed was at low tide and showed a lot of mud. We while the way the time until nine at a backeri with a cafe latte.
We decided to take a look at the new sections first and cover the rest later. In all we saw about three quarters today and will see the rest tomorrow.
Provence
This is one of the new layouts which we hadn't previously seen. It is notable for the vast fields of lavender which are immediately apparent. There are lots of little scenes of buildings on top of mountainous areas with incredibly good detail and if you look hard there are a lot of people working and being busy.
There is a good water scene passing right through and and tat he back it looks like a reproduction of the Pont du Gard. There are three nuns sitting on the wall of a monastery high up in the hills.
Fields of lavendar
Wonderful detail
The Bridge
The new bridge over the canal between the two buildings is quite a feat in itself. It is on a slight gradient higher at the old building to the new building but there is an incredible range of modelling displayed on one side. There is a double track with a great variety of trains running. There are lavender fields of Provence, Dutch bulb fields, a Pacific island with a lagoon, part of a large container vessel, arctic ice floes, whales jumping out of the water, terraces probably from the Philippines, a desert with pyramids, salt flats likely from Bolivia and a South American market place.
View from the bridge over the canal.
The bridge
Market place
There was a constant stream of trains, passenger and freight crossing between the two buildings.
South America
The new South American section is vast. My first impression is the Incredible amount of detail that has been put into here both in the terms of figures and vast buildings being lit individually by computer. Copacabana Beach has a lot of interesting things to see and I found that if I kept going back I would find something new and different. I think the pictures will show more than my words.
Rio de Janeiro at night
Copacabana Beach
Copacabana Beach
A run down bus station
A rail cleaning train
There were lots of buttons for kids to push to see lights and animation
Mardi Gras
After Lunch
We started to take a look at the earlier part which we have already seen a couple of times. There was a great deal of work carried out during the pandemic, particularly adding computer aided lighting to buildings, upgrading older items and inserting new items. I set out below a few pictures I took today.
Sweden
A new formal garden
Sheep with a sheep dog
Ship sailing into port
Night lighting can show up some good features
Shaun the Sheep was a cartoon character of a BBC series by Wallace and Gromit.
A train of Christmas trees
A very large concert
The crowds were not too bad although there were a number of school groups. It was tiring and we left around 4 p.m.
Zurich Hauptbahnhof Paul has prepared some extensive notes and photos of the Zurich Hauptbahnhof. This will be in several parts. The busiest station in Switzerland is Zurich Hauptbahnhof (Zurich HB) which is used primarily by the SBB. It has 26 tracks serving almost 3000 trains daily and it is one of the busiest stations in the world. It was built in the 1870s and is a main shopping destination as well as a transport hub. There are three levels for platforms and the "Shopville" shopping plaza. The river Sihl river passes right through the station with platforms passing above and below the river. This shows the general layout of the station with the surrounding tram tracks shown in purple Tracks 3 to 18 are terminal tracks located at ground level, served by two side platforms and seven island platforms. These are used by long-distance trains from throughout Switzerland, and by international trains. Tracks 21 and 22 are underground terminal tracks, served by a sing...
This video, by Noel Wyler, shows what we have just missed. Last Saturday (14 September) the Oensingen Balsthal Railway organized an event to commemorate 60 years of the Re 4/4 locomotives. They brought together 24 of them and ran them as one train. Paul and I flew home on KLM from Schiphol Airport. We took a train from Den Haag directly to the airport. The trip back was marred by a couple with a young boy who was obviously teething. He cried almost continuously for the full six hours. I found I could tune him out when I dug deep into the KLM sound system and found a treasure trove of classical music. Bach violin concertos, Mozart piano concerto No. 23, Beethoven symphonies, Schuman etc. We survived the stupidities at the entrance of the Montreal airport and caught the KLM bus back to Ottawa where we arrived precisely on time. A good ending to a wonderful, tremendous, trip
A Dutch speciality - pancake with cheese, mushrooms and bacon. This was the only picture I took today - after we had finally arrived at Den Haag. We went early to the station at Basel to check on our train to Dusseldorf only to find out it had been cancelled. A visit to the SBB ticket office revealed that the train hadn't actually been cancelled but was starting today from Karlsruhe. They found a connecting train leaving a little earlier which we took. This became progressively later and later so that it arrived at Karlsruhe just as the connection was about to pull out. A frantic dash across the platform and we were able to claim our seats. The journey to Dusseldorf was peculiar, There were periods when the train went fast (up to almost 200 kmph) and other periods when it dawdled. It progressively lost time except that it arrived at its final destination, Dusseldorf, eleven minutes early. (An injudicious use of recovery time in the schedule?) Dusseldorf gave us an opportuni...
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