On a Bavarian Alm, the door opens to the toilet. A woman sits there with his pants down. In the Background, a black steam locomotive rushes by. A few meters further on, the Blues Brothers bobbing to the beat of the music. In the model railway world, the Odenwald, North America, and the free state of Bavaria are only a few steps away from each other. A day lasts twenty minutes, a round trip through the Ruhr area, about five minutes.
Sven Blechschmidt, running through the dimly lit industrial hall on the outskirts of Fürth. Is closed on Mondays, the model railway world for visitors. But the trains are not silent. The employees will repair wagons, laying cable, repairing tracks, enlarge the network of roads and rails and expand the landscapes. Four large and several small plants found in the 2000 square metres of hall space. Visitors can even walk across Germany, through Austria and America.
Blechschmidt, opens the gate and enters the so-called shadow station. From the outside, it looks like he was running on the Central mountain-system in a mountain. However, the mountain is hollow. Sheet Schmidt is in a dark corridor between the waiting trains. The shadow station is a construction site. Soon, and certainly before the German railway project, Stuttgart 21, the panel and the wiring finished. Then, when a train in the shadow station, los jets is automatically a waiting train.
home “rail-free”
Sven Blechschmidt, the technical heart of the model railway world and climb to the control room. Screens are the driving display plans of the individual trains. By the click of a mouse blechschmidt sends a freight train on the trip. A Computer calculates how long the train the Track occupancy and which train is next, and leave in may. In spite of the high accuracy trains derail daily, mostly due to a short circuit on one of the plants. Sometimes even small children are hands in the game, the attack in an unguarded moment over the Barrier.
Not only is the Small stand in amazement in front of the miniature worlds in the Odenwald. Women and men of any age would have a field day, says Blechschmidt. Men interested in more technical Details, women for landscapes and figures. “Me, the technical stuff are fascinating, especially,” says the thirty-eight year old who is changed almost a year ago from a Berlin model railway exhibition to Fürth. Love the little trains began in his Childhood. In the house of the grandparents in Dresden Blechschmidt played for the first Time with a model railway. Since then, he has made the Fiddle to a Hobby and later into a profession.
“is The actual Drive is only a Gimmick,” says Blechschmidt. He is concerned with technical development, new light-emitting diodes in the locomotive headlights or the optimal train schedule. The model railway of his grandfather, he has lifted – but hidden in a Cabinet. To need home Blechschmidt free “train”. In a single working day, night falls for blechschmidt and his colleagues four times. A day take in the model railway world for twenty minutes, with fifteen minutes of daylight and five minutes of night-time lighting. In the night a plant at the entrance stands out particularly: the world’s largest miniature fair in HO gauge. Ferris wheel, Ghost train and merry-go-round rays in the sea of 35,000, the small light-emitting diodes. In between 10.500 figures pushing through the flashing glittering carnival, place.
The magic is in the Detail
next Door to the Ruhr area and plant it in the night, no cotton candy and no merry-go-round. Here, it is difficult to malocht. Freight trains bring coal, ore and steel blast furnaces, coal Mines and coking plants. In the “hüttenwerke Oberhausen” welded together on the night shift seams. Sparks flying through the darkness. A Minute later it is bright again. Nevertheless, the time remains the same. Whether day or night: In the Ruhr area, everything revolves around the sixties, the last high phase of the coal industry.
With building plans and photographs from the sixties have been recreated model railway enthusiasts the railway stations of Oberhausen, Dortmund-Boevinghausen and Bochum-Dahlhausen. The facades of the model houses are rußverschmiert. On the roads, VW beetles, women in mini-skirts have made for the tents in the forest. In front of the Herz-Jesu-Kirche in Oberhausen market trader to stack pyramids of fruit and vegetables. “Somewhere here must be floating around the Pope,” says Blechschmidt. In fact: Hidden behind a residential building neighbors to the crickets got together and seem to have invited the Pope. Again and again, employees can build such small jokes in the plants.
