London - Arabstoday
World's longest model train in hamburg
Welcome to the world's largest model railroad, in which the whole of human life is faithfully recreated in miniature. The Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg boasts more than 39,000 feet of tracks, on
which 890 trains travel across a quarter of an acre of land.
And there is much more to the intricate creation than railway lines, with carefully crafted party-goers, lovers and mourners at a funeral making their way around the tiny planet.
A scaled-down Las Vegas - with 30,000 lights - stands in the middle of a miniature U.S., alongside representations of Austria, Scandinavia and Switzerland - which contains a little chocolate plant and open-air concert with 20,000 fans in attendance.
German mountain range the Harz and the Wonderland's host city of Hamburg also appear on the landscape, with France, England, Africa and Italy to come.
America is smaller than Hamburg in the design, but is packed with famous sights, including a Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, Yosemite Park and Cape Canaveral.
In Scandinavia, the meticulous detail extends to a northern Baltic Sea filled with 33,000 litres of running water, in which low and high tide are simulated every 30 minutes.
A baby fleet of 25 ships will eventually be operated by autopilot on its surface.
One day lasts 15 minutes in this fantasy land, which is controlled entirely by computer.
The busy little miscrocosm contains more than 300,000 lights, 215,000 trees, 3,000 buildings and 200,000 human figurines - a bigger population than some major cities.
The artists have allowed their imagination to really run riot in a fake city called Knuffingen, containing model policemen and firemen with working engines and sirens.
The madcap mini-world even features figurines having sex in a field of sunflowers, being chased by UFOs, breathing fire, bench-pressing cows, picking up hookers and riding in giant bee-machines.
The model world has taken 500,000 hours to build, but is only half complete, with its talented creators expecting to finish it in 2020.