Hi!

Some chaps in America (one of them thinks that MiWuLa is in Munich) are gonna do it bigger and better.
All that in the famous town Greenville, SC.


http://miniatureworldoftrains.com/news

Edit:
New competitor, see post #19:
https://www.marklin-user...-in-2012.aspx#post276823

Edited by user 05 March 2011 17:19:04(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Talk is cheap. I will be interested to see if they deliver anything near the scope and complexity of MiWuLa. I can't wait to get back to Hamburg to see the new airport they have developed! And Switzerland. That was about half done the last time I was there.

Saw a short trailer on that airport, recently (don't remember the channel, though). Just overwhelming !!!

Well, I have been to Northlandz in Flemington NJ. It is a large footprint building but the layout is unappealing, small in scope and not very well maintained. Also, the building is a firetrap. As to North Carolina, I doubt I would make a trip to there to see it, but if I were passing anywhere near, I would probably stop in and check it out.

Or let's see if they can walk the talk...

I will believe it when I see it...

Cheers,
Ranjit

It sounded a bit too American focused layout for my taste... that's my first impression.
Does bigger = better? Remains to be seen..

They're talking about 30,000 sq ft, so it's larger.
And they say they'll do it better.

They got a website, they're taking donations and search volunteers - and they search a location ...

Hilarious! They even have "Admission price", "How to get there" and "Opening hours".
I must say, as with MMRCSA, this lights all the red lamps up.
-And even if they should be in good faith and/or succeed in mount something, this is definatly not an acceptable (for me) way to do things!

And another company trying to build the largest layout in the world (as of 2014):
http://www.worldofrails.at/start_eng.php

They'll do it in London, Vienna, New York, and Tokyo.

If you read their "Business Plan", you will see that they intend to allow the public to control the ships!
Lots of promises in that text...

There are photos of the guy (Gerhard Vavra), who also seems to be the owner of "Nanosolution", which is housed on the same street as the "World of Rails" project.
http://www.nanosolution.at/PROshop/start.php?action=ansicht_infoseite&auswahl=i
On some of the press-photos of Herr Vavra, you can see a model railroad layout. Somebody knows anything about this layout?
http://www.worldofrails.at/Bilder/slides/DSC04622.html

I still think there are too many big words, but at least the World of Rails project looks more... realistic, than the american project...

Edit; The ref. to Nanosolutions may be in error; it´s the result of a simple crossed reference using the guys name, the location and Google. He himself states that he worked in the IT area...

I think they need a banker - what is Flash up to? Maybe the Cave is available t rent?

I signed up Nev for a passenger level donor. I tried for station locker attendant level
but they are not accepting that as a position. Likewise John (River) was late in grabbing
ladies Locker Room level, he lost out to Big Daddy there.

Jeremy.

I'd rather just drive 30 minutes south to San Diego and go to the >San Diego Model Railroad Museum.<

It's only American trains, but trains nonetheless.

The web site of "World of Fails" died a few months ago. They failed to open at all.

I guess they have aimed high.

I was lucky enough to visit MiWuLa in Hamburg a couple of weeks ago and bought the book, that details the last eleven years behind the scenes, and it is been hard work. The original plan was for a modest layout, and year on year they have been adding to the layout, and currently a module reflecting the country of Italy is under construction, but the key point is that when conceived MiWuLa was not intended to be so big. They have been able to grow on the continuing success.

So these people plan to be bigger than MiWuLa without any experience, and plan to be so big from the outset, it is impressive, but when you consider the time it takes to build something so large, it raises some serious questions over viability, but I wish them well, the world has a shortage of great layouts.

I think the UK would benefit from a great layout maybe not as big as MiWuLa, but I think there is a very clear market out there for somewhere to take the kids at week-ends, and when you think that MiWuLa in Hamburg has over a million visitors a year paying around £10 standard on the door entrance, potentially for a right minded group of investors, it would offer a solid investment return.

BR

Glenn

This is true, but Ian does not charge..............yet

follow up:
I'm from the Greenville area and I'm one of the guys that resigned from the project a half year later when it got out of control (when the dream of Mr. Ruby was getting bigger and better).

BTW.... the original Idea was just to build a small public layout in Greenville and grow if it generates enough income to sustain itself. So not a business like MiWuLa, not the size and not "better" but not necessarily bad.

Guys, please check out there website, lots of pictures from this amazing work that will draw now millions of Visitors around the globe (according to the business projection I saw) and that's in a space of around 4000sf including a "Museum" and a "Shop". If I would dream that aliens beam me up it would be more realistic in my opinion. Please understand me right, I would love to see more interest in model railroading in our area and I wished the guys would had done a better job but this is just ..... you know. Every serious model railroader will know what I mean.

Here is the link to the pictures, see for your self:
https://www.miniatureworldoftrains.com/images/GrandOpenAndBeyond/032914-AMR-FCR/Images-032914GrandOpen.htm

I few month ago I took a trip to Germany and used the ICE to Hamburg. Booked the "Nacht im MiWuLa" what is a special evening after the regular open hours where they only allow around 400 people to get in - it was worth every cent. This is nice, no waiting, no second or third row in front of the layout, just perfect. The next day I had a "tour behind the scenes" what was very interesting for a tech-guy like me. I already watched all the "Week" reports from Garrets Tagebuch but to see it in real is just unreal .

So anybody that like to claim to do it "bigger and better" should go first over there and see for them self what the heck he is talking about.

in Addition:
--- forgot to mention that the admission for this great layout is $5 (kids starting at the age of 2 years pay the same, very family friendly) ---

This is the work of over 200 Volunteers around the US that started to work around a year ago on structures (as stated on there web page). Construction begin was a half year ago and we still see unpainted mountains, missing plaster, unfinished track work like switches in the middle of nowhere, no ballast, no lights, no details, no animation, no train control, no car system, no..., no...., no... - the list goes on you get the picture. The modular club layout we created was more appealing.

Unless you have a vision yourself I imagine it would be very hard to direct volunteers to do the job well and stick to it and unless you've got a business plan with outgoings costs, capital etc etc. any such project can become overwhelming.

there is a similar project going on in Vienna (Tirolerland) and I haven't heard the latest but they are progressing and one can only hope their capital outlay, creditors are staying behind the project.

I don't know where Greenville is and how many people interested in model railways live around this area or how close it is to other major cities.
One thing I can say when we displayed our layout for the first time yes there was a section unfinished or more precise, a blank chipboard but lots of people praised us for doing such a good job with the rest of the layout.

I can't comment on, although there are pictures from the layout how this layout is going to be received by the public and one has to ask the question would I be paying an x amount for an entry fee and would it be interesting enough for me to open it for the public.
personally I don't think it is a good idea showing a layout which is most probably 25% finished or half finished and this could put people off a.) what they are seeing and you can't expect the public to see your vision you have in mind.

a good advertising affect would be by inviting people free of charge and take people through what the end product could look like and this way you may get more volunteers to help and a feedback from the public if they come back or what would they like to see for them coming back.

the finished product sells if it is made well, well organized and informative.

regards.,

John

good luck with your project.

John

Well, the bell has tolled.

Have been receiving emails from the Miniature World of Trains™ since their 'great 'inception back in 2011 (actually 2009, but I signed up for the emails from'11)

With always stating how they were moving ahead, always finding new premises, new layouts, yadda, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Well here's the latest email, quite long but very informative with explanations how it began and its' meandering path to a hopeful conclusion.

If you want to know how it actual came to a crashing stop, just scroll down to the parts in yellow.

The End of the Miniature World of Trains™

Message From
Founder and President Frank Ruby
03/27/23

Overall Project Update

From Frank Ruby
Founder and President

The return of the Miniature World of Trains™ status!

First a little back story.

Since 2010 the Miniature World of Trains™ has been trying created a top notch world class group of highly sophisticated model train displays that are both fun but educational as well.

Examples would be Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg and the Porsche Museum in Germany, Grand Maket Rossiya in Russia, Little Canada in Canada and Entertrainment in Ohio to name a few. However, the new Miniature World of Trains™ wanted to create a new group of new displays unlike anything seem in North America. More details available via the links below.

Back in 2010, right after the non profit version of the concept was created, a 30,000sf former Winn Dixie was offered to the MWOT™ concept for free. The catch, it needed about a one million dollar over haul! We had to pass on that deal.

At this same time we created the first Christmas Display for the Children's Museum of the Upstate with full sponsorship for MTH-Railking, Lionel and Atlas O. We did this in the space of two weeks for Thanksgiving.

In the forth quarter of 2010 the concept negotiated a $1.5M sponsorship donation from the Siemens corporation via 7 separate $200k donations from each division of the company. The deal was almost complete in late 2010 when one of our board members did not follow up as current I pleaded that he do. When he finally did so, the Siemens contact went back to Germany for Christmas. When he returned in 2011, Siemens was reorganized into 5 divisions and our contact was in a new position. We could not resurrect that deal.

Soon after I negotiated a lease of just $20,000 p/m for an old Sam's Club on Laurens Rd. But they wanted to sell the building for a mere $3M dollars. I was working on the funding with BB&T bank and the State of South Carolina at the same time MWOT™ created a second Christmas Display for the City of Fountain Inn which drew some 10,000 in its limited two week run in early December 2010 and the redisplay located at the N Pleasantburg office location through Christmas 2011.

During this time a development company purchased the Sam's Club building for cash and promptly tore it down for future development.

Following the success for the Fountain Inn display MWOT™ was approached by a local grocery chain to take over one of their closed properties. After 4 months of negotiations we could not come to an agreement.

That same day the MWOT™ Beta test location came available and the deal for the 5,000sf to create the first MWOT™ HO test display and house the current Christmas Display was agreed to that same day!

A 2.5 year lease was signed for the MWOT™ Test which would allow us to seek a new location. That lease ended in the summer of 2015 when the board of directors decided to end the non profit. Though the parking issues in the area and new construction with a construction crane to be placed right outside of entrance, the BETA test still drew some 80,000 in total of the two years. This was done without parking or any advertising!

But, until the last month, we have not been able to find a viable location, though we got close with a 60,000sf former grocery store back in late 2019.

Then the Covid situation hit and in early 2022 the new for profit Lillput LLC was formed to find a viable location.

Well after a year of searching and losing out on several locations that a AAA fitness business was scooping up, we finally have found a location that this fitness company seems not to be seeking that will work for MWOT™!

Late last month CEO Kelly Orr submitted a Letter Of Intent to lease 27,000sf of space just off I-85 in Greenville, SC. I have hoped to have this great location open by the holidays in 2023! But the owner seems to be dragging their feet.

As of this update $700,000 has been committed to getting the venue for the project started by June 2023 if not sooner! But that does not seem to be likely to happen as of this update.

Already, I have the plans for the new larger O Scale Christmas Model Train Display™ and the new larger Miniature World of Trains™ HO Display have been created for this location but we have no commitment from the owner.

The plan was to start building the Christmas Model Train Display™ as soon possible along with the set back barriers for the first two displays. At the same time we wanted to begin the addition of 16' and 10' high partition walls, update the flooring and paint. At this point this will not happen and there are no other locations for the project in the Greenville, SC area.

The only other option is to build from scratch. However, the cost to acquire the land and build PHASE I is $7M. So, as of this update I do not think the project has investors to reach the $7M threshold.

Where does the blame sit for the funding issues the project when it was a non profit and there was plenty of locations to lease?

Originally, the first president of the non profit version for the concept was Roland Stadelman. He advised he could get the needed $1.5M from his clients in the Tryon, SC area. Just after the submission of the 501c3 paperwork to the IRS, he abruptly resigned for the Board of Directors and thus the potential funding went away. At this point I took over the reins of the non profit as president.

Once the 501c3 was approved in early September 2010 we began looking for locations and funding. This is when board member Ed Eichelberger and I worked on the Siemens deal. Because of his lack of follow up the $1.5M deal went away!

After this, Roland Stadelmann rejoined the team again in mid 2011 promising the funding from his contacts. Not one dollar was donated from these contacts. Simply stated he lied! He quit again!

So as of today with about half of the needed $1.5M committed I can not find a location to house the project. The build from scratch option is not going to happen at this point either with no one with deep pockets stepping up to fund the project.

So, after trying to get the viable project funded over the last 13 years I am giving up and will not be moving forward with any activity. I have wasted all this time. So I am done! Frankly, I have other things to do. I tried and have failed.

The LOI is still out there but I do not hold out any hope that this will be accepted by the owner of the property. If, by some miracle it is approved then I will step back in but and will not be actively working on the project as of this update. As of last week no decision has been made by the property owners.

So, it seems it is time to let go of the dream to get the Miniature World of Trains built after 13 years of trying.

Now I will move on and work on my personal display the Denver, Front Range and Rocky Mountain Railroad (DFR&RMRR). This display will incorporate some of the special effects and features I developed for the MWOT™ project. I will be sharing the current status of my railroad via a new YouTube channel I am currently working on.

Thanks to everyone that supported the project since 2009!

Frank Ruby
Founder and President
03/27/23

Never though it would work, as from the start it was always talk and not much action.

Maybe first get all the funding organised before advertising that it was coming.

Just my two cents worth.

There is Nortlandz in New Jersey which isn't a club. There is a local Gratiot valley American ho club with a large layout but rarely hold open house. Same for the O scale club in Holly which is in the former theatre.
Locomoland in Niagara Falls Ontario on the tourist trap strip. Pre Covid the GV held bi annual show and swaps at the large community college hall.