Tuesday 26 August - Miniatur Wunderland

The Milenium Falcon is one of the few non-Terestrial items at the airport


General view towards the terminal building

We spent the whole day at Miniatur Wunderland. Having visited several times before I did not take too many pictures but will concentrate on certain aspects.

The Airport

The airport is stunning in its complexity with the number of aircraft moving around at any one time - up to about 10. In addition there are trains bringing passengers as well as fuel oil and the number of road vehicles moving around the tarmac at any one time is very impressive. There are buses that take the passengers to the terminal from planes that are not connected to a gate. There are emergency vehicles and there are oil tankers as well but the overall effect is just an incredible organization. At any one time there must be 20 or 30 vehicles moving, planes moving, planes taking off, planes landing.  Quite amazing.

Night time view

There is a small section with an old aircraft which is used for the emergency crews to practice. Every so often it bursts into flames and the police and firefighters rush to the scene.

All aspects of the airport operation are covered.  There is an enormous taxi rank, a huge parking garage as well as an airport hotel. Each location has a lot of very fine details. People standing around a car , arguing etc. Almost unnoticed by most people is the railway access - there is a full station underground which caters to passenger traffic and there's also a series of freight trains mainly oil trains providing the necessary fuel for the airport.

Hung from the ceiling in a couple of prominent places there are live plane arrivals and departures. These  update as the planes arrive and depart.

Patagonia

This is in the new section over the bridge across the canal to the new building


This shows where, in Argentina, the three rail line (broad and narrow gauge) parts company. I have been to this location several times. In real life this is the other way around with the narrow gauge diverting to the left to Esquel. The signal is authentic.

A narrow gauge train is just joining the dual gauge track for the journey to Ing. Jacobacci.

The joint station.
Behind the Scenes Tour
Paul arranged for an exhaustive behind the scenes tour in English. It covered all aspects of the the world's largest model railway and its development. We  sat under a Swiss mountain and under an erupting volcano.
The first Magnum of the trip

We will be returning tomorrow so I will be able comment further then.






Comments

  1. Colin, thanks for the daily updates. It’s fun to see locations in miniature that you have physically visited. Little Canada in Toronto does much the same and have a similarly distorted mini of Ottawa.

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