Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg is a gigantic display railroad in Hamburg's Speicherstadt. For much of the layout, the builders decided to go for big, dramatic settings -high alpine peaks, tall bridges stacked above smaller bridges below. ‘Every fifteen minutes, the entire layout cycles from "day" to "night", with some twilight and sunrise in between. There are hundreds of cars moving semi-autonomously throughout the layout; they turn on their lights at 'night', and use their turn signals while they wait to make a turn. (Police cars and fire engines have flashing lights, too.) Up till now approx. 500,000 working hours and 8.7 Million Euros(11.7M $) they have put into the Miniatur Wunderland.
The Miniatur Wunderland has been constantly growing since 2001. Having started with two layout areas, Harz and Southern Germany, the Wunderland has openend the eighth area, Knuffingen Airport, in May 2011. More layout areas have already been planned until the year 2014.
Other areas currently include: Hamburg, Austria, United States of America, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Switzerland. The next two destinations slated to be built are France and Italy.
All parts are built to a scale of 1:87. Much of the technology is custom-created as many of the stock components were not designed for continuous operation.


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