Wunderland Hamburg: A Paradise for Model Railway Fans | Full Documentary

monumental buildings gigantic railway stations and a digital command center that controls everything hundreds of thousands of figures including even the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars it's just fantasy were in Wonderland I think being a bit crazy is a major job requirement for working in Wunderland this is just amazing isn't it a creative team that constantly thinks on a scale of 1 to 87 [Music] hundreds of trains hundreds of meters of track and tinkerers for whom no challenge is too great if you make a mistake at the beginning it has an effect on the whole thing right down the line millimeter perfect precision under constant observation everything has to fit exactly even when time is pressing state-of-the-art technology that amazes thousands of visitors every year and a constant stream of breathtaking ideas the worst I can do is go wrong here everything is possible [Music] five in the morning the big cleanup before the big day at the biggest model railway in the world careful careful careful lift it up a bit higher yes I've got it at the moment Pizza Hut fee and Bastion yacouba's still have the whole railway to themselves a well coordinated team because even vacuum cleaning is precision work here you do occasionally vacuum up a few figures by mistake but you notice that too because they always rattle you hear it as soon as you've done it so you can just open it up afterwards and sometimes you pick five or six figures out again and stick them back where they belong so it's not really a problem they'll always be some losses vacuum cleaning the entire 1500 square meter model village with all its buildings vehicles and inhabitants would probably take more than a year to complete we're never finished never you can't just say we'll start down here and in three months we'll be finished at the other end like I said we have a look around every morning and then we decide where to go Las Vegas America perhaps or coughing him it's always dirtiest there or the airport we know we definitely have to go there at least once a week today the cleaning team has to go into the Alps it's a good job there are hidden maintenance hatches throughout the entire complex nevertheless Pizza Hut fee really has to stretch out while she's dusting after all even at a scale of one to eighty seven the mountains are still quite high just before 8:00 the first visitors have already arrived it's the school holidays peak season at me Nia two of Underland despite opening times from morning till midnight the place is always busy all the time Frederick Brown is ever-present he and his brother Garrett founded me Nia two of Underland in 2001 meanwhile they've had to introduce a new reservation system visitors booked their tickets online in advance for a set time window there's no other way to cope with the masses of people we dreamed of having 100 to 150 thousand visitors a year that's about 1,000 visitors a day during the main holiday period currently they're attracting much higher numbers today alone we'll see around 5,000 people arriving meaning a two of Underland has long been one of the main attractions in Hamburg visitors don't only come from all over Germany but increasingly from abroad as well only about 10 percent come from Hamburg I think 25 or 30 percent from 150 kilometers around the city after six months I got an email from someone in Tokyo asking if I was the guy with the model railway he'd like to come and see it and soon flew in from Tokyo more than a million people come to see me Nia to a wonderland every year it's a great attraction for both young and old the gigantic Trek Network the lovingly crafted landscapes the elaborate buildings those coming here are given plenty to see the statistics are impressive 1040 model trains travel along fifteen thousand four hundred meters of tracks there are four thousand one hundred and ten buildings and bridges inhabited by some two hundred and sixty thousand figures over seven hundred and sixty thousand hours of work culminated in the creation of this sixteen million euro miniature world the dimensions are just amazing there's so much here that's simply unique worldwide the airport with the planes taking off and landing automatically the sheer length of the rail network or also the fact that Hamburg soccer team scores goal after goal here even the transrapid roars through lower saxony while old trams rattled through rome and freight trains through the Grand Canyon and Hamburg's Abe Philharmonic Hall was opened here in 2013 four years before the original behind all this there are many creative minds at work in particular bundle and founder Frederick Brown a quick meeting at the railway tunnel that's absolutely fantastic and when all the lights go on up there have you seen it yeah on the left and right sides of the wall at about that height there should be a train as well though that terminates here there's one a very long one that really stops here yeah that'll have to be programmed perfectly yeah you do that the first time and then it gets a bit worn down and suddenly stops over here yeah but the guys will get that sorted out so it terminates here and that's where they get on what lots of people don't know is that we've got 300 people working in Wunderland now and that terrifies Garret and me because we're not typical entrepreneurs we've had no training it was all learning by doing and we're not typical bosses either but perhaps that's precisely why it's worked out somehow we've grown from 40 people when we started and we still say it's like a family even with 300 people and this family is always busy model makers are fitting a building into place they have to take care not to tread on anything and break it by mistake for in this miniature world they are giants one false move could destroy an entire district when Wunderland was opened there were three sections the imaginary capital city kufan with around 10,000 inhabitants central germany with the hearts mountains and Austria along with numerous railway lines a short time later Wonderland's hometown was added Hamburg with everything that makes this Hanseatic city what it is in 2003 came the leap across the Atlantic to America with a mini Las Vegas in the true glitz and glamor style of the original two years later saw the addition of Scandinavia and a very special highlight the North Baltic Sea filled with 33,000 litres of real water and 25 manually controlled crews and container ships all combined with a glittery snowy landscape since 2007 Switzerland has also been part of the mean yet to a bundle and with its imposing mountains an especially popular feature here is an open-air concert by Swiss artist DJ bobo and in 2011 after almost six years of construction config in airport was finally opened it's the only one of its kind in the world more than 40 aircraft move around the airport site independently with takeoffs and landings every minute the entire facility meanwhile covers several floors of an historic warehouse building in Hamburg vishesh district it consists of 9 interconnected country sections night falls every 15 minutes in Wunderland and then over 330,000 leds bring light into the darkness what was initially the mad idea of the two brothers flealick and gibbet Bown has now become one of the main tourist attractions in Hamburg Mina two of Underland offers its visitors an infinite number of photo opportunities [Music] it's never boring here everything is constantly in motion almost every day something somewhere needs to be repaired or optimized in hundreds of mini scenes the model makers relate little stories even in tiny concealed places on the rear side of the layout where hardly any visitors ever go some of these scenes are weird others brutal or not exactly g-rated visitors can set about 200 of them in motion at the push of a button these are the ones that bring Mina to of Wonderland to life whether it's a forensics team after a body has been discovered in the water anglers on the Hamburg docks or a trip in a hot air balloon in Mina to a bundle and there's always something going on elephants breaking out of a circus chimpanzees relaxing on a beach here the popemobile has a flat tire large-scale fire brigade operations occur almost every minute the water from the firehose in this case is made of cotton wool and the fire is simulated by colored LEDs for the model makers however there's no time for playing they've got to get to the construction site me Nia two of Underland is to continue expanding and is now having a further attraction added Italy at ninety square metres it will be one of the largest sections so far and one of the most elaborate most of Rome's buildings are already standing now it's time for the details the builders carefully cut holes in the floor for the fountains that will soon be cascading here [Music] to prepare for this some of the model makers even traveled to Italy and returned with hundreds of photos and lots of ideas Gaston boycott was in Cinque Terre a the village of riomaggiore held a special appeal for him so he's now immortalized it here on a scale of one to eighty seven we've only made references to the village because it looks different in reality it's difficult to include something like that because I just have a bit of space here and a bit there the important thing for us was the tunnel that's original and that's original to some of the houses original and some are made up you can't reproduce it all in such detail the model makers workshop everyone is occupied with Italy at the moment as time is pressing the team are working under great pressure for the new section 450 buildings have to be completed by hand it's the only way to give the models their unique appearance most of the figures are made and painted in the workshop as well Susanna Zonda is putting the finishing touches on a Roman residential block as a dog lover she never misses an opportunity to put a four-legged friend into her models there are no limits to the imagination here there are no rules there should always be something funny in there something hidden but that's the best part just being able to say that's the way I'd like to see it next door to the outfitter shop for the clergy Susanna Zonda has put in an art gallery and conveniently located one floor above is the artist studio complete with a naked model all finished the block of houses can now be taken to its destination in Rome very carefully they don't want anything to break now [Music] the building is one of 450 handmade houses in the new section prefabricated model kits haven't been used in media two of Underland for a long time what's the point when your model makers are such perfectionists this model consists of hundreds of individual parts if it's drop now weeks of hard work would have been for nothing but it all goes well the building fits exactly into the intended gap the Roman Street is complete back to the workshop Christian Xhosa now is an expert on aging he makes sure the buildings and walls are given a realistic patina with the help of special pigments he transforms this gleaming white model into antique masonry we have photos of the originals like these here for example that's what we use as a basis and try to recreate them as far as possible we have to keep an eye on the time of course it can't take forever and then we try to integrate it into the layout so we stick to the originals as far as we can but every now and then we've no limits so we can do what we need to or have to or would like to almost perfect and very close to the original nextdoor his colleague Leo and Celine is plagued by quite different worries he has to finish the Sistine Chapel but he hasn't yet found the right floor surface [Music] it's a tricky puzzle you have to print out a test sheet and then see what it looks like and then you find things think yes that's the way to go and then you see that they look like garbage and then well she kind of improvised and then the printer doesn't work oh well this venerable Chapel has been in slean's problem for weeks now and it's proving to be a serious test for his patients the numerous details that must be faithful to the original require the highest concentration [Music] especially when it gets all fiddly you can't get in here with both hands and it's already half built so you can't take it to pieces but the windows have to be clean and you can't reach them to do it there's so much to pay attention to if you make a mistake at the beginning it has an effect on the whole thing right down the line so to speak Oh God but at least the internal lighting works so to begin with I was like it all works it's all so small no one can see it anyway but you eventually come to a point where you start turning into a perfectionist just for yourself and then it's all about the final 1% when you think yes it's got to be done like that otherwise I'm not being true to myself so to speak nextdoor in the technical workshop a discussion about st. Peter's Basilica which is about to be connected up to the power supply I'm wondering whether I should take one of these little black clocks we used on the cable car cabins and glue it in here and just put this on top but then I've got this problem with what do you think yeah I've just put it together now and you can see right away how tricky it is and then you've got a five pole connector in a pin strip in there too right right it'll just break that'll never work no st. Peters is also one of a kind it was assembled by the model makers after months of development and so that it can later shine in all its splendor Nina v cost has to fit it out with dozens of LEDs to do so she needs several meters of cable that's why we do it bit by bit for instance I started wiring up the windows here on the outside and then gradually work through this row and then this one then these cardboard boxes for the towers I did it piece by piece so I wouldn't get all the cables mixed up when you then see you finished the work and got the job done on time that's really exciting and then you hope that nothing goes wrong definitely not easy especially since the technicians and model makers work under constant observation because most of the workshops are also accessible for the visitors [Music] [Music] countless meters of table later the jobs finally done st. Peter's Basilica is approaching completion [Music] a masterpiece made of 22,000 individual parts so it's hardly a lightweight nevertheless the modelers have to operate with extreme care and attention the slightest misjudgment now could have disastrous consequences the cables fit perfectly they're not in the way the tracks that's great trains can get by all good design and construction took almost two years now all that's missing are the cable connections underneath the model down here there are hundreds of cables and wires but even so technician Kenneth Munda knows his way around this cable jungle perfectly here we have I don't know around 300 street lights in the roam section alone but we don't switch them all on individually of course in the real world to each Street is basically wired with three phases and that's how we do it as well and each phase has a slight delay from the moment it switched on and that creates quite a colorful picture when all the lamps light up one after the other but we can bundle these cables together relatively easily so it looks like less and less we must have about 10 times as many cables lying around in here than we actually need for the switchable contacts underneath the model complex is a different world of cables and connections only the technicians know their way around here for better orientation they follow a strict color code just power supply that's only the power supply for the railway nothing else here's a nice bundle that goes all the way along here these are the cables for the points for the signals the trains run according to the signals just like in reality the signals have to be there and that works on this power line this is only electricity here and over here we have all the cables with the different colors as you can see for example yellow is for normal house and apartment lights here right as for street lighting white with purple and blue that'll be for a car in its indicator and that's how we find our way around hundreds of kilometers of cables have already been laid in Mina two of Underland and there's no end in sight here there are a number of buildings you can tell from these bundles each of these bundles with yellow blue and sometimes black is for a building and here around the outside as you can see there's a street that's an access road to this small housing estate I know what's up there that's why I can say it's a housing estate here you can tell that this is for street lights and when we see from up there that a street lights gone out we can count along here to find out exactly which of these lights it is and if the cable is actually the problem we can look down here and find exactly where it is on the level above st. Peter's Basilica is now in the right position but the builders are not completely satisfied yet the problem we have now is that because they were now cables everywhere as well and we haven't had it set up like this before lots of things don't fit that means unscrewing everything we've already screwed together and then there was a plug missing and so the electrical people had to get that ready yeah it's always a bit tense over the last few meters but the most important thing is that everything looks perfect in the end and anyway it would be boring if everything worked right away perhaps some heavier machinery will do the trick wait wait wait pull it out again yeah right back in again you should never forget that it's only a toy but it's quite an expensive toy quite close bhai there's an ominous rumbling Vesuvius the volcano is soon to be one of the main attractions of the new Italy section making the nightly eruptions look as realistic as possible was a major challenge for the model makers and technicians creativity this completely in-house construction packed full of technical gadget REE took two whole years to develop aleksander voice is the master of this mountain of fire so let's get to work on the exhaust control system special chains provide the perfect lava look these are actually industrial chains from beverage producers and we've attached a six millimeter plexi glass plate to them top of this we modeled a larvae like mass using silicon and soot and we can illuminate the entire chain from the side through this plexiglass plate the light then penetrates through to the surface and it actually looks like genuine lava the result is spectacular and frightening ly real below Vesuvius of course there's a vast amount of technology to ensure the perfect coordination of sound light movement and smoke controlled by a computer program specially developed for this purpose now it's just a matter of finding the ideal settings we're in an experimental phase again how much smoke we can use how strong does the ventilator have to be will we have to increase the pipe cross-section to get more smoke that's what we're still trying out but things are looking quite good building Vesuvius took almost two years twelve months for development two months for the steel and timber construction and five months to install the technology and of course there were also occasions when things went wrong the worst that can do is go wrong that's all then you might bang and hiss a bit and we'll all laugh and then we'll just do it a different way and it might work of course we do apply a bit of common sense and reason but basically the approaches trial and error there's not much time left only two days until the opening they're still plenty to do at another place as well so then give me that piece that should be the last one right yes that should be the last very soon more than a hundred trains should rattle through Italy for this purpose vote convict has laid over two and a half kilometers of tracks installed 100 signals and more than 400 points I've already laid a total of 16,000 meters of track in about three thousand two hundred fifty points and because I've been here so long right from the start I've gained a bit of experience in dealing with all the rolling stock and things like that [Music] more than 1,000 a choke gauge trains wind their way through Mina to of Underland from high-speed trains to RAC railways the longest train measures just less than 15 meters 1270 signals and around 50 computers ensure the traffic runs smoothly Mina two of Wonderland's rail network is 13 kilometers long once the new Italy section is opened it will even be over 15 in reality that corresponds to a total tract length of about one thousand three hundred and forty kilometers all sections are interconnected and can be accessed by all trains whenever new trains are purchased their first stop is the locomotive workshop Mike Koz nod and his colleagues make sure that the newcomers soon fit in well with the rest of the fleet for Italy alone more than 100 new locomotives were acquired and well over eight hundred wagons they now need to be tuned so what we change is we install an electric contact to give us a power connection to the wagon so the trains will run more reliably and we can light up the passenger wagons we put decoders in them because a railway is digital and so every locomotive needs its own decoder altogether there are well over 1,000 trains and every single one of them is controlled by computer the same applies to the almost 300 cars and trucks on the roads for them to a dedicated computer program was developed that steers them through mania two of Wunderland the program provides each vehicle with a brain of its own so to speak which enables it to make its own decisions like complying with the right-of-way regulations for example at the rear of the model complex a number of charging stations can be found once their battery reaches a certain level trucks automatically drive in and are recharged afterwards they set off on their way again all by themselves the command center the nerve center of mania two of Underland here staff members monitor the trains and vehicles controlling them is carried out by computers should a problem arise it can be solved from here in the shortest possible time the way it works is at a train or a certain number of trains is activated in the morning when the complex is switched on and they carry on running an automatic mode do one circuit and then drive into the terminus then another train is activated it does a circuit as well you can see when a train is active when this shows right here at the front that means it's active and it's waiting for its route to clear as soon as it leaves it takes a yellow route like the one you can see here at the front and then you can see precisely which way the train will go next and that means that if any problems arise we can see exactly where the train is working here requires extreme concentration because malfunctions can occur again and again [Music] here's an indication for a short-circuit in the USA section it's a bit difficult to see at the moment of course because it's so dark so I'd say I'll go down and have a look at what it is before anything else breaks down [ __ ] huh Beckman makes his way through the complex careful he has to get to America because the edge of the Grand Canyon is where the broken-down train has come to a standstill [Music] fortunately the technician can fix the problem quickly command center for gerard switch USA to back on please and start the train up again everything back to normal we have a number of options we can climb on top of the model it's almost always strong enough and accessible if that's not possible there hatches so we can come up from underneath or sometimes we just have to stretch out a hand as far as we can and try and reach it somehow the finishing touches in Italy the model makers and technicians have only one more day before opening and it's all far from being perfect Tina Fisher is responsible for st. Peter's Square but at the moment it's still rather empty she needs people tourists and here in the modeling storeroom there are masses of them all painted by hand and lovingly formed now they only need to be spread around the square super glue keeps them firmly in place the current situation is that we don't have any large events for which some pita square would be packed with visitors it's more of a normal day we try to keep two pictures or two the situation we saw when we were there and nothing special was going on so we are trying to make sure that it's not too full or too empty but as realistic as possible and that's actually what makes it so difficult and here - working under constant observation with dozens of enthusiastic on lookers behind you it's not always easy to keep a steady hand Christian Schuh is the expert for water in Minya two of Underland and on the Italian Riviera he's really got his work cut out for him you have to actually think about how waves work around a ship you can't just squirt something in there and dab around a bit and the problem is that on a 1 to 87 scale the wave is so small it would hardly be visible so we exaggerated a little and so they drive around with a bit more speed a little white paint adds the finishing touches so now the final act so to speak I try to put some white on the top edges by graining them very lightly because when a wave breaks there's always a bit of foam on the top I'll make it a bit more obvious than it would be in reality so it'll be noticed altom utley this gives the model that final 10% extra that make people say wow it suddenly starts to reflect and if you look at it at the right kind of angle you can see the mountain and the whole town reflected in the water that's just like the perfect finish and then you realise we're about to open and that's why it's always exciting to see if it's actually going to work but it looks perfect and we're all really proud [Music] Gaston boycott is not quite satisfied yet his ice-cream parlor is getting a lighting system but it's not working out quite how it should I have these special little lamps that Leo made for me because I wanted them this way but it's round and keeps slipping away and the wire is so stiff that you can't get hold very well to bend it so you've just got to try somehow you got to be patient patience pays off in the end riomaggiore is almost finished a colorful Italian coastal village with lots of lively inhabitants all fixed into place with superglue and the Sistine Chapel 2 is finally ready to be installed into the complex if it would only fit I can only assume that all that carrying back and forth taking it out moving it around to somehow warp to the entire building but eventually it fits after all the Sistine Chapel shining in all its splendor and if you look very closely you can even see its mosaic floor huggable ash is the man responsible for the head of the Catholic Church he's still working on one of almost 200 push button actions these push-button actions are to show the Pope's daily routine here the different rooms in his residence are reproduced and it starts of course with getting up morning prayers and then it continues depending on where he is in his daily routine the little room lights up so then you could see that he's working somewhere or reading the morning paper etc etc it's all designed so that it can be taken out because we might get another pope again at some point and white smoke rises and that we know we have to make changes so let's see what lights up the study for example war downstairs that's another room and we don't know exactly what's going on there for now we've roughly described it as a table tennis room but it's really a secret room where the Pope can let himself go a bit and then the TV of course in the evenings the Pope watches it to take his mind off things tonight we put the life of Brian on and suddenly it's all over they've actually done it after three years of building and more than 180,000 working hours Italy is finished at last just in time afternoon or not it's more than enough reason for celebration because Italy has turned out perfectly no section of me Nia - of indolent has ever been as elaborately worked on and as expensive as this one or has been so close to the original motifs [Music] such attention to detail blurs the borders between model and reality [Music] and even the link between the modern and the antique has worked perfectly [Music] [Music] boss and founder fiddly clown is also extremely satisfied with the result all the more so since the easily section was a project very close to his heart but he doesn't have much time to enjoy the moment he already has new plans in mind as soon as Italy is open he intends to carry on building Osmania two of Underland is still far from complete a bridge is planned to connect these two warehouse buildings providing even more space for spectacular model landscapes our idea is to build France here at some point with the English channel under the bridge that's where the trains will run so you walk along the bridge with a great view down onto the boats on the one side and on the other side you walk along the model which is the English Channel with a piece of France added then the trains run into the tunnel and you carry on watching the ships for a bit and over there you go on to England so then we'll take parts of the ceiling out over there to make it a very high section and perhaps then carry on into Scotland a real fairy tale and then when it's finished we'll come back and finish building France that'll take a good 10 to 15 years but we'll carry on after that too evening falls in Hamburg the day at Minya two of Underland comes to an end but the ideas in the creative minds of the model makers probably never will and so this one 287 scale world will continue to grow you

Channel: WELT Documentary

Views: 903,961

Keywords: full documentary, free documentary, welt documentary, documentary film, top documentaries, reports, railway, railroad, Hamburg, attraction, museum, exhibition, exhibit, Germany, airport, making, Wunderland, Bahn, miniature, travel, Airbus, Boeing, world, largest, Wonder, A380, mechanics, Speicherstadt, Warehouse, harbour, excursion, fun, entertainment, model, 1:87, amusement, Deutsche Bahn (Business Operation), Miniatur Wunderland (Tourist Attraction), worldwide, Tourist Attraction (Building Function), theme park

Id: w-AvGfN4bJ0

Length: 48min 43sec (2923 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2020