Jason's attempt to get to Miniatur Wunderland. Via Fort William.

[rapidotrains]

OK - lots to report so this will take at least a couple of posts. I'm currently on an ICE train from Hamburg to Frankfurt. The trip was a success! 

 

As we had not showered since Fort William, by the time we reached Ulm you would not want to be downwind of us. The crooked hotel room was ready and we were able to shower. The hotel really was silly; when you're expecting the floor to be flat but it's actually a signfiicant walk uphill to your bed, you actually get fatigued very quickly....

 

Jürgen and I headed to ESU intergalactic headquarters. They have a very, very efficient operation. It reminds me of Rapido UK. It does not remind me of the chaos that is Rapido in North America! The North American team is amazing and our success is entirely due to the people I have working with me in the Canadian/American company. But I would hardly call it organized...

 

Below is one of ESU's show layouts, which I would like to emulate in Canada. I like the catenary on the lower level. Catenary would be particularly useful on a Canadian display layout as there is so much electrified mainline track in Canada - almost one mile! Well, when I say "almost" I mean "sort of." OK, when I say "sort of" I mean "Nothing. Zippo. Zilch. Bupkis. Not a sausage." (The only electrified mainline in Canada was torn up and is in the process of being converted to LRT.)

 

It's a rolling programme of electrification; it just hasn't started rolling yet.

 

 

Jürgen and his sound engineer, Daniel Macziol, gave me a very enlightening demonstration on how model train sounds can be vastly improved by using a better speaker and speaker enclosure. They have a design team in Ulm and they use their 25 years of experience as well as a lot of experimentation: 3D design and printing, etc. I was very impressed by how much noiseness they managed to squish into this tiny British engine made by some company I'd never heard of:

 

 

Man that thing is really tiny! I took a bunch of videos which I can't show you because half of them were of models ESU hasn't announced yet. But I will be showing them to the Rapido team in North America so we can keep the sound design in mind from the beginning when we are designing the models. We already do this in the UK, but I confess we do not do this enough in North America. That will change. Jürgen and Daniel's very convincing sales pitch may result in some small increases to our prices so we can invest is some more advanced speakers. 

 

After a traditional (yet vegan) Bavarian supper, we headed back to the hotel. To give you an idea of how crooked this thing is, the hanging LED light bar above the ground floor in the photo below is level.

 

 

We were in that top window above "HOTEL." Actually our room stretched from one end of the building to the other. Our beds were at the "HOTEL" end and the stairs down to the bathroom were at the other end. It really was an uphill climb!

 

The next day we took the train to Hamburg. Jürgen kept asking why we weren't flying. He likes trains, but he also values his time. I hadn't quite understood how south Ulm is and how north Hamburg is... The train ride was a very enjoyable EIGHT hours! Jürgen worked for most of the trip, whereas I eventually got tired of work and started playing poker with Boaz. Apparently this is illegal in Germany and we were arrested. But they let us out when I explained we were playing Seven Card Stud and not poker. All is good now.

 

This was our train:

 

 

I had convinced Jürgen that we should go first class. He couldn't understand why we should waste our money for first class. He explained that he has never travelled first class before on DB.

 

After we boarded, we heard the announcement that due to the flooding in southern Germany, a bunch of trains had been cancelled. We were now the milk run, stopping everywhere. The train got filled to the rafters like a CrossCountry Voyager.... in second class! By the time Jürgen came back from the mass of humanity that was the restaurant car he had been converted and was singing the praises of our spacious first class table and seats!

 

 

I'm getting better at these selfies, though I appear to be looking at the wrong end of the phone. Or I've gone cross-eyed!

 

The trip up the length of the country exposed me to a lot of Germany's trains. Oh. My. God. They have SO MANY TRAINS! And they are all different!!!! This place is a train lovers' paradise! Here are a few random shots. 
 

Regional train in Ulm: 

 

 

ICEs in Cologne:

 

 

Ancient, 60-year-old diesel hydraulic power in Münster:

 

 

Newer (50 years old) electric power in Münster:

 

 

A LOT newer S-Bahn stock in Hamburg:

 

 

Here's one of the most beautiful sights of the entire trip - the Hamburg station shed. Wow! This whole country just breathes trains. It is such a refreshing change from Canada and the USA, where most people don't even know we have passenger trains.

 

 

Many sheds in North America are Bush train sheds, otherwise known as low-slung train barns with no light. They make Euston look positively airy. In Toronto they had the brilliant idea to cut the Bush shed open and put a big cube of windows above the opening in order to bathe the trains and passengers in heavenly light. Yeah, they promptly got filthy. Have a look. The big cube of windows makes the Toronto station platform look a LOT like Hamburg, don't you think?

 

 

This trip to the UK and Germany has reminded me how North American passenger rail infrastructure is "very, very garbage" (as my friend Huang at the Rapido factory would say).

 

OK - next stop is Miniatur Wunderland!

 

In the next post...

 

-Jason

 

[rapidotrains]

We took a convenient U Bahn train from our local station, Schlump. What a name! I want to move to Schlump. It's between Shlub and Shlemiel and about a mile away from Shlemazel. Jürgen and I were comparing Yiddish and German words. Apparently many are the same, especially the swear words. I actually made him blush. I didn't realize quite how bad that word was.

 

Here our train pulls away from the Miniatur Wunderland station, Baumwall.

 

 

Miniatur Wunderland is located in converted warehouses that have a very Liverpool Docks feel to them. The bridge between the two buildings in the photo below is actually the bridge between MW's original location and the new, expanded location where they are building South America. The trains travel through this bridge, near the floor! The kids absolutely love that part.

 

 

The first thing that blew my mind upon entering the exhibition was the cafe. They've got ICE seats for a cafe! That is so brilliant! If Little Canada tried something similar at their setup in Toronto, the visitors would no doubt comment on how nice the airline seats are in the cafe. "They must be WestJet."

 

 

I made my way to the USA section and spent the next half hour filming our Amtrak Turboliner. I feel like we've finally joined the big boys. We have a model train at Miniatur Wunderland! I am starting the conversation with Miniatur Wunderland about a British section, and I am trying to convince them that the entire British section should be a faithful depiction of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway. I'm getting far. 

 

 

After having a quick nose around the rest of the exhibit, we got a behind-the-scenes tour with Marius Roth. Anyone can book this tour - we weren't so special! The first place he took us to was the American section. So we stood there watching the Turboliner... again! Actually I had to be dragged away.

 

 

They are planning on rebuilding the American section as it was one of the first sections they built and you can tell. The technology available to them has moved forward enormously since then. Have a look at this Antarctic ocean scene. This was mesmerising! The waves are projected on the ocean and the ship is on a moving carpet. It looks real!

 

 

 

That video has wiped out of my attachment allowance. To be continued in the next post...

 

-Jason

 

 

 

[rapidotrains]

You've all seen the Miniatur Wunderland videos on YouTube, I am sure. But despite seeing so many videos, the Knuffingen Airport scene is worth seeing in person. This was mind-blowing. The videos do not do it justic. It is just so HUGE and so impressive. And to think, this was finished more than ten years ago! I am not a plane fan. In fact I only really like one plane. We were very fortunately behind the scenes when my one favourite plane landed and parked. I almost fell on the layout posing for the second photo. "Just a little further..." "A little more..." Marius was VERY patient.

 

 

 

After our "behind the scenes" tour, we got a "behind the behind the scenes tour" with Dennis Fluhr, the head of railway operations at Miniatur Wunderland. This was very eye opening. Here we're having a look at one of their numerous test tracks.

 

 

That's Dennis on the left. A couple of interesting observations:

 

1. They don't have a regular maintenance schedule for their equipment. There is just too much equipment. They repair models as they break down. They have numerous repair technicians who are able to disassemble just about any locomotive or piece of rolling stock and rebuild it from the wheels up. Miniatur Wunderland is open 365 days a year, usually 18 hours a day. It's the biggest tourist attraction in Germany. Nobody designs model trains to survive that kind of punishment, so stuff breaks down all the time. All those boxes behind Dennis are full of stock. The trains do pause in hidden tracks in order to cool down and reduce the amount of wear and tear. Here's the Turboliner pausing beneath a mountain in the middle of its run:

 

 

2. The control of the layouts is actually very simple. There are 27 different zones, each controlled by two DCC controllers - one for the trains and one for the points/routes. They have custom-built boosters that can handle 20 to 40 amps, depending on the booster. The average OO/HO booster is 5 amps. Every car has resistor wheelsets so the track detection system knows where the trains are. Passenger cars and locomotives draw current so they don't need any modifications. However, freight rolling stocko requires wheelsets with resistors so they draw current as well. The trains are run by computer and monitored by the control room. To run the exhibits at Miniatur Wunderland only requires eight people - seven in the control room (who serve as troubleshooters) and one person to control the boats. Here she is:

 

 

The repair departments have tonnes of parts boxes as we all would have at home. However, instead of a handful of spare parts they have hundreds of gears, wheelsets, motors, etc. as they are replacing them so often!

 

 

Jürgen was really proud to see LokProgrammers in use all over the place!

 

 

And I was really proud to see Turboliner posters all over the place! There really were quite a few!

 

 

Only a handful of Miniatur Wunderland employees are railway modellers. As Dennis put it, after fixing model trains for eight hours a day, would you want to go home to work on your layout? Most of the technicians are quite young - early to late 20s. 

 

The gift shop didn't have any model trains for sale, which did not surprise me. For every 100,000 people who come through the door, how many want to buy a £200 locomotive? Maybe one, if we're lucky? This is why I have steered Rapido away from any mass-market advertising. If the newspaper/online ad is reaching a million random people, the chances of any of them caring is very slim. That's why we advertise in model magazines and we target our Facebook ads to people who actually want to see model train imagery and news. 

 

But cars are a different story. Cars are relatively cheap and everyone relates to cars. I think actually the moving cars and other road vehicles are more of interest to most of Miniatur Wunderland's visitors. And they know this, as the latest scene - the Formula 1 race in Monaco - doesn't really feature trains at all. This explains the brilliant idea of having tables full of cars for sale at low prices. I confess I bought four cars. I think the total cost was about 27 euros.

 

 

Hamburg is a really lovely city...

 

 

Final post to come...

 

 

 

Edited June 9 by rapidotrains

[Delta_Who]

I'm still campaigning for Jason to use the Rapido factories one time to make a 18 inch Dalek model. Haven't had one since the early 2010s 😁Full motorisation on the plunger/stalk. 360 head movement. You know you want to!

[rapidotrains]

There is a lot to do there that isn't railway-related. Though I will share this funny story. Boaz has just come from Israel and was so excited to see Israeli trains in Germany. Then he realized that there aren't Israeli trains in Germany. There are German trains in Israel!

 

 

Hamburg Station has some very weird guardians around its perimeter. I mean, who thought this was normal? The guy on the bottom left looks like he could just about pass for one of Sir Humphrey's or Sir Arnold's lot from Yes, Minister. Oh no, I've just offended some retired civil servants from the 1970s...

 

 

This morning we took a Beatles tour of Hamburg. They spent many months in Hamburg between 1960 and 1962, and it is where they really gelled as a band. They also got a lot better. It happens when you are performing for 10 hours straight... every day! As a huge Beatles fan, I really enjoyed the tour, though the neighbourhood is not anywhere you'd want to raise a family. There are still a lot of strip clubs, brothels and rough bars in the area. 

 

Boaz took my photo in the same doorway seen on the cover of John Lennon's LP, Rock 'N' Roll. It was taken by his friend Astrid Kirchner when he lived in Hamburg. It's amazing how little the scene has changed in over 60 years! We only noticed now that I was on the wrong step, but who cares - it was cool anyway! I was literally standing in the footsteps of a giant, though John was just a year or two older than Boaz when this photo was taken, and I am an old man!

 

 

Our ICE to Frankfurt is now running 90 minutes late, so we're on par for all but one of the train rides since we left Fort William. 

 

All going well, we're boarding a 747 for Toronto tomorrow. Though it's not Concorde, it's something I've always wanted to do. I hope it's not 90 minutes late...

 

I'll post an update here if anything crazy happens between now and when we are supposed to get home, but I am really hoping nothing does! It's going to take at least two weeks to recover from this two week trip! 🤣

 

-Jason

 

[burgundy]

2 hours ago, rapidotrains said:

I am starting the conversation with Miniatur Wunderland about a British section, and I am trying to convince them that the entire British section should be a faithful depiction of the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway. I'm getting far. 

 

-Jason

What an excellent choice!

Does that mean some more Brighton locos and stock? 

Best wishes 

Eric  

[rapidotrains]

Two things I forgot to mention:

 

1. If anyone finds themselves in Hamburg and wants to take the Beatles tour, the tourguide's name is Ian Shulman and you can book a private tour with him here: https://www.viator.com/tours/Hamburg/The-Beatles-in-Hamburg-Tour/d777-10357P9?googlettd=true&src=papi&campaign=e

 

2. I stopped into a bookshop at Hamburg train station and they had a WHOLE SECTION devoted to trains and model trains, including British and American magazines! There are about three titles at the WHSmith at Paddington... As I said, trains are everywhere here!

 

 

The departure board was a bit quaint, mind you:

 

 

(Yes, that's a printed timetable in a box. We couldn't find the proper departure board - we probably walked right under it!)

 

 

[BR60103]

9 hours ago, rapidotrains said:

We took a convenient U Bahn train from our local station, Schlump. What a name! I want to move to Schlump. It's between Shlub and Shlemiel and about a mile away from Shlemazel. Jürgen and I were comparing Yiddish and German words. Apparently many are the same, especially the swear words. I actually made him blush. I didn't realize quite how bad that word was.

 

There is a song about it :   Schlumph ist mein Gesitzenbaum    by Anna Russell.

 

[SRman]

Train travel in Europe, and even Britain, is generally so easy. With Eurail or Britrail passes, we never even worried too much about timetables. If we missed an intended service, there was always another, usually much less than an hour away even for the long-distance trains. Try that in Australia. The major cities here have suburban rail systems, many of which are now electrified, but miss a long-distance train, and you may have a day or even a week to wait for the next one.

Miniatur Wunderland is wonderful. I've been twice now in the last six years, and there's always something new, something more to see. Knuffingen Airport alone is worth the visit, in my opinion. The scenery, trains and Faller road systems are a bonus. Hamburg itself is a wonderful place and I dearly want to get back there again.

Jason, were there any of the rubber nosed trains still running in Israel? Boaz might be interested that there are still hundreds of such trains running in Denmark, and a few more in Sweden - they are a Danish design. Heljan made models of the 3-car diesel mechanical IC3 units, but Miniatur Wunderland found their models too unreliable, so there's an opportunity for Rapido if you are game! There are 4-car electrics (IR4) to the same body designs, and then there are the differently shaped Øresundståg trains, which are not the type run in Israel. Do a model of the IC3 and you can offer various Danish and Swedish liveries, Israeli and even Amtrak liveries (they borrowed a couple of units for trials). I believe Spain had some also. The photo shows a pair of the DSB IC3 units in Hamburg Hbf, although they are now running electric Vectrons with some old German coaches for the Copenhagen to Hamburg services.



Of course, for the double deck Israeli sets, you can already get the German models anyway.

Sorry, that was a bit of an aside. I have thoroughly enjoyed your travels, and agree with many of the observations you have made about the various railways and their operations. The one thing my wife and I found was that the timekeeping of the British, German, Danish and Swedish railways was generally very good, but I know there have been a good many disruptions to all of those systems and the "locals" don't seem to hold their timekeeping or reliability in quite such high regard! 

 

 

 

Edited June 10 by SRman
Fixing typo

[Wickham Green too]

11 hours ago, rapidotrains said:

... (Yes, that's a printed timetable in a box. We couldn't find the proper departure board - we probably walked right under it!)

Unfortunately a 'proper' departure board at a busy station - try Berlin Hauptbahnhof - can't possibly show enough trains but those printed ones show everything that ought to run.

[turbos]

On 05/06/2024 at 11:37, rapidotrains said:

Boaz and I were particularly impressed with the cable suspension bridges holding up the catenary in Europe. I guarantee this was a billions of pounds cheaper than the honking great girders used in the Great Western Electrification Programme. But I also guess that Health & Safety have decided that they are far too dangerous (just like a few new miles of third rail would be) and we should instead invest in hydrogen/antimatter hybrid trains rather than a rolling system of electrification in the UK. 

There is a rolling system of electrification in the UK, it just isn’t in Wales, England or N.Ireland!

 

Brian.

[rapidotrains]

8 hours ago, SRman said:

Jason, were there any of the rubber nosed trains still running in Israel? Boaz might be interested that there are still hundreds of such trains running in Denmark, and a few more in Sweden - they are a Danish design. Heljan made models of the 3-car diesel mechanical IC3 units, but Miniatur Wunderland found their models too unreliable, so there's an opportunity for Rapido if you are game! There are 4-car electrics (IR4) to the same body designs, and then there are the differently shaped Øresundståg trains, which are not the type run in Israel. Do a model of the IC3 and you can offer various Danish and Swedish liveries, Israeli and even Amtrak liveries (they borrowed a couple of units for trials). I believe Spain had some also. The photo shows a pair of the DSB IC3 units in Hamburg Hbf, although they are now running electric Vectrons with some old German coaches for the Copenhagen to Hamburg services.

 

I rode an IC3 when it demonstrated in Canada in 1996. I arrived at Toronto Union Station with a ticket to London, Ontario. They told me that the IC3 wasn't running to London that day but instead was going to Ottawa. So I changed my ticket at the last second and boarded about two minutes before the doors closed. 

 

This was before (most) laptops and cell phones, and I was at a table with three other people. We schmoozed all the way to Ottawa. It was a very pleasant trip!

 

Boaz reports that the Flexliners are stored at Jerusalem Malha station and the yards in Haifa. They were retired while he was there.

 

I'm in Frankfurt airport now. I was warned that Germans like their airports hot but boy is this place hot. It's got to be 26 in here. Either I find a shower or I start buying sparkling water by the vat to throw over my head...

 

I'm sorry I checked my swimming trunks. I think I will need them on the plane!

 

-Jason

 

 

 

[Ben B]

This has been a fascinating travelogue, thanks for sharing :) shame you couldn't make the KWVR (my local line these days), and always love your obsession with Travel West Mids buses (blue and silver, for me- childhoods on the routes 257, 256, and 254's). Hope your flight home is a tolerable one!

[Kylestrome]

We also have live online departure boards:

 

https://www.bahnhof.de/essen-hbf/abfahrt

[Wickham Green too]

28 minutes ago, Kylestrome said:

We also have live online departure boards: https://www.bahnhof.de/essen-hbf/abfahrt

... complete with ( at present ) the obligatory cancellation and bustitutions !

[melmerby]

3 hours ago, turbos said:

There is a rolling system of electrification in the UK, it just isn’t in Wales, England or N.Ireland!

 

Brian.

Forgot about the Valleys?

[turbos]

3 hours ago, melmerby said:

Forgot about the Valleys?

The Welsh valleys electrification is one big project rather than part of a long term rolling plan of electrification across Wales.

 

Brian.