While some people only need six days to create the world, others spend more than 1,000,000 working hours to create miniature worlds on just 1,545 m² of space. We are talking about the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, where the world’s largest model railroad and miniature worlds of superlatives have been tirelessly under construction for almost 22 years now.
1,000,000 hours – that’s more than 41,666 days, around 6,000 weeks, over 1,360 months or even 114 years. That’s how much time the hard-working Wunderlanders have spent together creating more and more miniature worlds. In all these hours, entire landscapes and cities have been created on 1,545 m² of layout area, a sea with a capacity of 30,000 liters of real water has been excavated, over 16 km of track has been painstakingly laid and around half a million LEDs have been installed, while 289,000 little figures have found a home in the wondrous worlds of Wunderland during this time.
Over the past 22 years, not only has the world’s largest model railroad layout been created, but also a complete work of art that is constantly under construction. “Every single one of the 1,000,000 hours of work has made Wunderland what it is today and we are so happy to have put so much time into every little detail,” says Wunderland founder Frederik Braun. And indeed, even the smallest details are not spared in terms of working hours. Even individual figures, such as colorfully costumed carnival performers or baroque dancers in opulent dresses, are given exactly the dedication and time they need. And then it can happen that the special production of a single figure suddenly takes several days. Elaborate buildings and important sights keep their builders busy for several months at a time.
Expressed in working hours, this means, for example, that a parking garage at Knuffingen Airport took around 3,000 hours to build, while the construction of the miniature Elbphilharmonie and the development of its mechanics took around 13,000 working hours. The scale of projects such as the world’s largest miniature airport can already be imagined in view of the construction times of individual buildings or figures. The development and construction of the in-house Knuffingen Airport took no less than 150,000 hours. This corresponds to a construction time of more than 200 months or even more than 17 years if a single person had done nothing else around the clock. Fortunately, a whole team of Wunderlanders pitched in and the construction time was reduced to “only” six years.
And who owns the hard-working hands that create the wonder worlds? In the past 1,000,000 working hours, trained dental technicians have created entire landscapes, former confectioners have designed countless sceneries, trained florists have maintained square kilometers of grounds and former zookeepers have made cars drive. “Our Wunderlanders come from a wide variety of backgrounds and each and every one of them brings very special skills and their own personality to the table. This makes Wunderland a very special place,” says Braun.
The diverse worlds of Miniatur Wunderland range from a quaint fantasy location in southern Germany to the Hanseatic home of Wunderland, Switzerland, Italy and now even South America. The “end of the world”, Patagonia, is set to follow at the beginning of 2023. Of course, this is by far not the end of Wunderland’s map expansion and the next million hours of work have already been tackled.
PHOTOS AND VIDEOS
YouTube: https://youtu.be/AMChQr668EM
Facebook: https://fb.watch/eW2bLupjgP/
The TOP 10 most elaborate buildings in Wunderland
The picture gallery as a click gallery for download: ZIP file; Buildings-TOP10
The TOP 5 high workload worlds
The picture gallery as a click gallery for download: ZIP file: Worlds-TOP5
1 MILLION WORKING HOURS AT A GLIMPSE
WORLDS
Italy ……………………………………………………………………………..180,000 hours
Airport …………………………………………………………………….150,000 hours
Switzerland………………………………………………………………………….150,000 hours
Scandinavia……………………………………………………………….140,000 hours
Hamburg ………………………………………………………………………109,000 hours
America………………………………………………………………………….99,000 hours
Central Germany…………………………………………………….69.000 hours
Rio de Janeiro……………………………………………………………..60,000 hours
Venedig………………………………………………………………………….35.000 Stunden
Knuffingen……………………………………………………………………..28,000 hours
Austria……………………………………………………………………..12,000 hours
BUILDINGS
Colosseum …………………………………………………………………..23 months
St. Peter’s Basilica …………………………………………………………………..22 months
Elbphilharmonie…………………………………………………………13,000 hours
Schloss Neuschwanstein …………………………………….12 months
Prokuratien ………………………………………………………………….34 weeks
Doge’s Palace………………………………………………………………..26 weeks
Airport parking deck P4…………………………………………3.000 hours
Michel …………………………………………………………………………….2,800 hours
Chocolate factory ………………………………………………….2,500 hours
Volksparkstadion………………………………………………………1.200 hours
AIRPLANES
An-124……………………………………………………………………………..5 months
Concorde………………………………………………………………………4,5 months
Beluga…………………………………………………………………………….600 hours
SHIPS
AIDAblu………………………………………………………………………….1,000 hours
Superfast VII………………………………………………………………..720 hours
Kronprins Frederik…………………………………………………….650 hours
Wind of Change…………………………………………………………3 months
CARS
FDNY Tiller Ladder „Seagrave Marauder II“…………………………..72 hours
Airfield fire engine „Ziegler Z8“………………………………………….60 hours
Mountain Valley Truck………………………………………………………………………..40 hours
Press contact
Sebastian Drechsler
s.drechsler@miniatur-wunderland.de
+49 40 300 68 00
