Miniatur Wunderland's Guest #10 Million!

Miniatur Wunderland's hits guest #10 Million!  Amazing.

And, of course, they present via their amazing layout, too! What a fun little event. The winning guest got free admission for life. Not bad. Not bad at all. :)

Funny, I never knew the main guys are twins! Gerrit and Frederik Braun. It was strange seeing the two of them at the toast. hehehe It looks like I should read up on my Wunderland!

Miniatur Wunderland remodeling

There are some big happenings over at Miniatur Wunderland. They are revamping the layout of their offices and building including a new ticket system, larger eating area and new children play area. They are taking advantage of the renovation to make the stairway larger and add additional improvements that will make visitors more comfortable and happy.

It seems like they are also going to guided tours instead of a free form style, so that will be interesting. They are aiming to have the work done by July 1st, so of you're planning a trip, you may want to wait a bit. :)

Gerrit also talks about a recent accident with the plane system and the addition of a few new planes.

NOTE: There is a closed caption button at the bottom of the player - CC.

Shuttle and Programming

More amazing work from Miniatur Wunderland and Gerrits Tagebuch, their resident hobby genius! Listening to Tagebuch talk about having to go through the programming to find a small error that would happen once a week is wild. Just seeing the control screen for all the events and vehicles is mind blowing.

I love the model railroad hobby. It brings me great joy. I sit and tinker on my little N scale projects and build my little empire one tiny building or scene at a time.

Then I see things like this video and my mind melts. Computers driving planes, cars and scenes through an intricate environment of tracks and tunnels. Timed events and happenings that go off like clockwork as thousands of visitors pass through.

It shows just how wide the spectrum of model railroads (and airports) really is. Some truly amazing work here.

Happy Birthday, MiWu!

Miniatur Wunderland has been open since 2001. Happy Birthday! :)

This MiWu News Segment talks about the celebration. (Make sure you click the CC for English)

MiWuLa TV News: July

Make sure you hit the Closed Caption button for English translation!

Pola N210 - Lokschuppen - Happy With the Outcome

I still have some details and "fine tuning" I want to address, but I'm really happy with the progress.
Some of the items worked out really well. The Cat weathering, crane weathering and the detail weathering on the fence and wheels by the doors really helped to set the scene.
In retrospect, I think a dirt brown would have been a better base ballast than the iron red. I may go in and try to address that somehow.

Now...where to put it? :)

MORE IMAGES HERE:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/malcojojo/sets/72157627277283970/

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Pola N210 - Lokschuppen on base

I have the building on the base and the ballast down. (The excess is still on) I think this will work nicely.

You can see the tracks leading into the building are up and out of the scene at the moment. I plan to do some heavy blending with additional ballast and paint to push it into the scene more.

The small scoop Caterpillar may stay as part of the scene. I like it. I'll also add additional trucks around the building - I figure the workers I'm planning to add will either drive their own trucks or carpool, but I need more than ONE truck in the scene! :)

Next steps:
• More weathering to the building
• The addition of a fence and/or shrubs to blend the building base into the ballast area
• Blending the tracks into the scene
• Adding weathered train cars - I have a crane car that will be awesome in this scene!
• Adding the workers and their cars

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Building Complete

Well, the first phase of the building is done. I've done a first round of weathering on the whole thing, but I'll go back once it's mounted up and do another pass.

One of the things I'll have to see about is the blending of the base that comes with the building and the base I'm going to have it sit on. I'll do some blending or use a fence and/or shrubs to push it in a bit.

Fantastic kit! (Pola Lokschuppen)


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Pola N210 - Lokschuppen

I started work on the Pola Lokschuppen or roundhouse kit and knew it was going to be fantastic to build right off the bat.
The pieces went together really well with little to no tweaking needed. Some of the parts had some extra mold snips needed, but that was rather minor.
The base had some nice details built into it as well - some small rocks and logs - that will add to the overall scene once I paint them up.

Loving it.

While this kit doesn't really go with my other looks and feels for Briddon (the fictitious town and city I see all my train stuff living in) I figure it would be easy to play off as some throw back architecture that someone liked long ago and built up. Either that or this is simply not part of the Briddon area at all. That would work as well. :)

the overall idea for this is taking time and adding some details to the overall scene. Folks working, some weathered train cars, weathering the building itself, and plants and vegetation around the scene. Should be fun!

LOXX

Another place to venture to if we make it to Germany in 2012!

This model railroad video shows tons of toy trains at the LOXX Miniaturwelten in Berlin (at their new location in the Alexa shopping center at the Alexanderplatz).

Miniatur Wunderland - Emergency Vehicle

More amazing footage on how these vehicles and scenes are put together. A lot of work to get things to work correctly!

More Miniatur Wunderland

More amazing videos from Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg.





Train ride through snowy Sweden

Miniatur Wunderland - Vol 23

Talk about dream jobs!

Imagine the money he has to play with doing this stuff.

"I need a few more thousand deutschmarks - I have to build tiny rail platform displays."

I just love the details and small elements they place into the scenes. And, of course, it would be AMAZING to have this kind of space. If I had just one table area like this parking structure area for my N-scale, I'd be SO happy. Heck - HALF this space would be amazing.

I really do need to make it out there one day to see this. Luckily, my wife has a friend in Germany, so the trip may be warranted in the future! :)

Subtitles available by hitting the CC button in the menu bar.