The world’s largest model train set

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2000, nightclub owners and twins Frederik and Gerrit Braun went from the neon lights of a Hamburg nightclub to building the world’s largest model trainset.

Miniatur Wunderland is now a top tourist destination and global attraction visited by millions, including celebrities like Adele and Sir Rod Stewart.

Frederik and Gerrit Braun tell Megan Jones where this crazy idea came from.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: Frederik and Gerrit during the construction of the airport section. Credit: Frederik and Gerrit Braun / Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Why does some big successful brands go bust?
0:05.7	Toast is back for a new series, taking a look at the decisions that often left investors burnt.
0:11.6	I'm Sean Farrington, a BBC business journalist. I'll be hearing about the hype.
0:15.6	They're going to do the deal that makes them the most money at that point of time.
0:19.7	And I'm picking what went wrong, talking to
0:22.1	owners and employees to ask, what can we learn? It was being undercut by similar rivals. It just
0:28.8	couldn't survive. Toast. Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:44.5	Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Megan Jones.
0:50.4	Witness History takes you to a moment in history to hear the amazing memories of people who were there,
0:52.8	as well as powerful archive recordings.
0:56.7	It is just nine minutes long and it comes out every weekday.
1:00.1	So make sure you subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
1:04.7	And don't forget to turn on your push notifications as well, so you never miss an episode.
1:10.9	I'm taking you back to when two brothers, who were once kings of the nightclub scene, gave up late nights and loud music to create a massive model railway,
1:16.2	which is now one of the top tourist attractions in Germany.
1:22.0	It's the year 2000, and we're in the techno nightclub, voila, in the heart of Hamburg in northern Germany.
1:28.9	On the dance floor, a group of people are gathered.
1:32.7	But they're not dancing and there's no musical strobe lights.
1:37.8	Instead, they're in the middle of a job interview.
1:40.9	I think we chose 40 people and spent two weekends with them on the dance floor building,
1:46.4	watching them, what they can do, how to deal with the task together,
1:50.3	and then we chose our first 20 people for the model building.
	...

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