Wunderland Pt 2 The Airport......

 

Wunderland the Airport

(Following text is from Wunderland webpage, Photo's are mine)

 

 

Airport Plan

 

 

In the past years, embedded between Knuffingen and Switzerland, Miniature Wunderland’s latest layout arose – our passenger airport. After more than 6 years of construction, it was inaugurated on May 4th 2011, at last. The development of the Airport began in June 2005, already. In 2008 the planning phase was finalised, and the final building plans were worked out.

Since the 22nd of August 2008 the plan was lying on the layout base, initiating the construction phase, officially. The layout arose right in front of our visitor’s eyes. Not only for aviation and technology fans, the impressive Airport is the new Wunderland highlight. Up to 40 different aircraft's (from Cessna to Airbus A 380) are taxing independently on this Airport to the gates. They are also being moved back from the gates by push-back vehicles in order to taxi to the runway. There they are accelerating and taking off or landing respectively. Each aircraft is equipped with original lights and original, realistic turbine sounds. 

 

Hamburg Terminal

 

 

 

 

The Carsystem of the Airport

In contrast to the original car system, our new vehicles at Knuffingen Airport are equipped with sensors, which transmit all data via infrared signals. Thus, it is possible to simulate a more dynamic movement of any vehicle, and lights, turn signals, as well as speed levels can be switched and altered while driving. Furthermore, infrared technology enables a more precise position analysis. Thus, the vehicles can drive with a shorter safety distance to other vehicles in traffic. Constructing the Airport vehicles was quite challenging for the team. In order to stuff ever more technology into ever smaller vehicles, we had to make many laborious modifications. Here, we have to point out those relatively small interior cleaning vehicles for the Airport, as all components had to be exchangeable, in order to save time when repairing them.
The following vehicles can be seen on the Airport, as well: tankers, catering trucks, de-icers, septic tank trucks, garbage trucks, luggage cart tugs, dispenser vehicles, passenger shuttle buses, crew shuttles, snow ploughs and blowers, as well as ground staff vehicles.
However, the yellow-black Follow-me vehicles, which usually direct aircraft's on the airfield, do not exist on Knuffingen Airport, in this manner. Because the more tiny the technology, the more difficult it becomes to synchronise two vehicles following each other on the same stretch. Here, even two identical motors have different handling characteristics. That’s the reason we’ve created a fleet management system, functioning via lit carriageway markings, directing the pilot over the airfield. In reality, a similar system has been established on the London and Munich Airport by now – it seems as if our idea was not too far-fetched, after all.

 

 

 

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I spent well over 4 hours looking at this section of the layout, over the weekend.  There are 28no. Flying planes and i must have seen most of them take off, there is even a Bee and a USA Shuttle.

 

 

Sorry for the shaky camera at the start, but it was still getting used to my new camera.  On the Sunday we had a behind the scenes tour, the operation system in place for stacking the planes for take off, is a work of art.  The road system in the airport is very cool, each plane has a fuel tanker, bus (if required).  There is a working Flight information board, which tells you which is the next flight coming in and going out, All very impressive.

 

 

 

 

 

 



WUNDERLAND - Part 1

WHAT and amazing place, a must see for all i have to say.


Of the 8 of us there for the weekend, myself and a club member Rory, flew out on the Friday (22nd) to Gatwick then Hamburg (There is a direct flight from Edinburgh with Easyjet starting march the 21st, Not told the misses yet........).   We arrived about 6pm and met up with the rest of the members, and head for some food, then into Hamburg Station for a little spotting.

 

Hamburg Train Station.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was about -6 and windy over the weekend, but nice and dry inside the station.  For the time of night there was quite a bit of trains coming in and out.

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, we had booked tickets to get into Wunderland at 8:30am so we could get a locker and beat as much of the rush as possible.

  

The first room we came into was the Alps.  Massive is the only word i had for this area, over two stories of the building, it was a very impressive entrance to the layout, white mountains as far as the eye could see, huge platform station, some amazing Bridges and tower cranes.  The level of detail packed into the buildings, road, platforms was unreal, there was so many little scenes going on everywhere.  It too me an hour and a half just to leave this section.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a view from the level about down onto the Station below, (I wonder how many Camera's have be dropped from here).

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was so many small detail and scenes dotted all over the place, i no doubt missed a lot. Here some likely lads have tried to tunnel into the bank safe, but it seems the police have an idea of what there up too.

 The Concert was something else thousand and thousand of people in the crowd, over sixty portable toilets with all sorts of things happening in them, a large camp site to the back.



 

 

 

 

 

This is a ship lift and one of my favourite structures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have to say i am a big football fan and have followed my team around Europe many times, and i have always fancied building a model football stadium on a layout.  So when i came across this i spent allot of time think how i am gonna fit something similar in my attic layout.

 

 

I must have spent about two hours looking at this stadium, how is was put together, the materials used, how the people were seated, the pitch was laid out, and i was hooked.  I spent most of the rest of the weekend when not at wunderland planning a layout around a stadium as a centre piece. With multi story car parks and a close by station for the fans to get to the match (had to put trains some where.  I am currently doing a lot of research on a stadium to build that would fit the space i have for it.  This stadium has been built to an N scale Size (1:160) at looks to fit in really well with the HO (1:87) layout.

 

Multi-Story car park, there is a square car park kit on the go, i will buy a few and double the size.

 

I will move on to the Airport next, out of the whole weekend i spent there, by far i spent the most time here.



Wunderland, Hamburg

Its been a while since i last post,

Now that Xmas is well out the way i have been clearing the attic out and boxing up all my sons stuff up (that has magically appeared) to give me room to start looking at the space and designing a track plan.

I have made one or two buys from eBay this month.

From http://www.greenmax.co.jp/  Greenmax i bought this building.

Mid Size Station Building - Greenmax No.2132 (1/150 N scale)

 

 

 

I am hoping to use this as part of a large city station, the signs on top i will change to Neon, and try and get a proper working clock,  If i can pick one more of these up cheap enough i will double the height.  This was from Plazajapan on eBay only £11 and £5 postage all the way from Japan unreal, and only took 5 working days.  I also picked up a few Kato container waggons.

 

The space in the attic is almost clear, but all my free money has gone towards a trip to Hamburg, so the base boards will have to wait a few weeks, Still that gives me loads of time to design the track plan, with some help from a friend John Bowman i think.

 

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As the heading states i am off to Hamburg on Friday with my Model Railway club.

 

http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/

 

Edinburgh's Thistle Modelmakers are going as a club trip (http://www.thistle-modelmakers.com/).  Which i am very much looking forward too, this will be my first trip to wunderland, but a few of the club members have been once or six times already.

 

On the Sunday we have book the behind the scenes tour, to show all the inner works, which is gonna be super.  as you can tell i am very excited about this, and if you want to know more about Wunderland, have a look at the amazing stuff on youtube and there webpage.

 

When i get back i will put my Photos and Vid up, and let you know how i got on.