H0-Modellbahn Deutsches Museum 1:87 – 45 m² weiße Anlage „Wernmünden“ – Verkehrssimulator Mobilität

The Deutsches Museum’s current H0 model railway layout presents itself in an unusually minimalist color scheme, featuring a very high proportion of white. Spanning 45 square meters, and functioning as a traffic simulator, it explores every facet of "mobility" within the semi-fictional town Wernmünden in Lower Franconia. A huge model railway layout (1 to 87 scale) has been a fixture in the main building on Munich’s Museum Island since as early as 1962. Planning for this third generation of the layout began in 2015; the hardware was completed around 2022, and for some time now, the automated demonstrations — held twice daily — have been running with a high degree of stability. The L-shaped layout, 2.6 meters deep, features arms measuring 11.4 and 8.6 meters in length, and extends across multiple track levels. The main display level features approximately 250 meters of two-rail track from Tillig’s "Elite" system. On the fiddle yards levels—also visible in the video — another 500 meters of H0 track have been installed, bringing the total number of turnouts to 185. Additional features include a tram line and over 20 meters of roadways populated by self-driving cars utilizing the Faller Car System. For this video report, I was given an extensive tour and explanation of the layout by Frank Zwintzscher, Curator and Head of the Rail Transport Department at the Deutsches Museum. Furthermore, I was granted an in-depth look behind the scenes and permitted to film excerpts of the automated demonstration sequences. I also filmed two extended train journeys spanning the entire layout: a historic museum train hauled by an S 3/6 express steam locomotive, and a freight train pulled by a modern diesel locomotive. The video consists of the following sections, which you can conveniently jump to directly with a mouse click or a tap of your finger: 00:00 Welcome Frank Zwintzscher, Deutsches Museum 00:26 Wernmünden: Traffic Simulation in H0 01:01 Layout's White Aesthetic Visualizes Mobility 03:24 Where is Wernmünden? Which Railway Epoch? 04:57 H0-ICE bridge spanning the Main Valley 05:45 S-Bahn station integrated into the layout 06:05 Faller Car System with ultrasonic positioning 06:55 750 m of H0 track; "Wernmünden" track plan 08:33 Long coal train running on the layout 10:16 Look behind H0 scenes – Deutsches Museum 12:39 Museum train run: S 3/6 3629 H0 Trix 21360 17:05 Control center for H0 layout at Deutsches Museum 17:25 Camera surveillance of the fiddle yard area 18:56 Layout ontrol via TrainController software 19:29 Layout construction work during COVID-19 period 21:15 Special train (pulled by S 3/6) returns 22:05 H0 layout demonstration: "Wernmünden" at Deutsches Museum 27:35 Round trip with Class 66 ESU H0 EMD JT42CWR 31:20 Look back - museum's layouts 1962 and 1997 33:50 The approach to current layout planning 34:57 Letter-hunt game at Deutsches Museum 39:51 Farewell Further information: https://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/mu... After I had the opportunity to present the museum complex in great detail—spanning six printed pages — in Eisenbahnmagazin issue 7/2026, the publisher has also made a high-resolution overview of the "play level" track plan available for download on their website at the following link: https://eisenbahn.de/eisenbahn-magazi...