Inside the world’s largest model airport and railway

(CNN) — There’s a low rumbling sound of aircraft landing and engines whirring. Bags are loaded onto planes. In the terminal, people sip coffee, wait for their flight and reunite with loved ones in arrivals.

An Emirates A380 readies for takeoff, accelerating before soaring into the clouds. A crowd of onlookers gasps in delight as the superjumbo disappears out of sight.

No, they’re not plane spotters — or at least not in the traditional sense, because this isn’t a real airport. The airplanes are fake. The clouds are painted. The airport spans just 1,614 square feet.

Spread across several stories in an old warehouse building in Hamburg, Germany, Miniatur Wunderland is a marvel of engineering and one of the German city’s most beloved tourist attractions.

Its crown jewel is its airport — a painstaking recreation of Hamburg’s real transport hub, complete with 52 moving aircraft, carefully painted with livery to match their real-life, larger counterparts.

Miniatur Wunderland is the vision of twin brothers Frederik Braun and Gerrit Braun. Once upon a time the pair ran a nightclub, but a childhood spent playing with model trains sowed the seed of an idea that returned to Frederik in 2000.

Frederik recalls phoning his brother and telling him, “I have the greatest idea.”

Gerrit was on board right away.

As soon as Frederik spoke the words aloud, this childhood vision came rushing back to Gerrit.

“It took seconds. All the pictures from our childhood — and what we could do today — came into my mind,” he says. “And these pictures were not standing still. It was movement. It was life. Lights turning on and off, trains running, planes moving and flying…”

Within weeks, the brothers were sketching out on ideas. Within months, they’d signed the lease on a building in Hamburg’s port district.

Frederik and Gerrit were convinced the idea had legs. But there were plenty of naysayers.

“Many, many people around me said to me, ‘No, it can’t work. Model trains? That’s for old men,'” says Frederik.

But Miniatur Wunderland had mass appeal, becoming a word of mouth hit when it opened in August 2000.

“It is an exhibition for the whole family, for each person, one to 100 years, women, men, does not make a difference,” says Frederik.

Designing a mini version of our world

For brothers Frederik and Gerrit Braun, creating Miniatur Wunderland was a dream come true.

Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg

Before opening Miniatur Wunderland’s doors, Frederik, Gerrit and their third co-founder, friend Stephan Hertz, sat down and made a list of all the scenes they’d like to see play out in miniature form.

The next step was hunting out a model builder who could help bring their dream to life. An internet search led them to skilled German modelist Gerhard Dauscher.

Dauscher initially turned down the opportunity as he was fully booked with work for the next two years.

“Two days later, he called me,” recalls Frederik. Dauschler couldn’t shake the idea from his mind. He rejigged his schedule and joined the team.

Speaking to CNN Travel today, Dauscher says Miniatur Wunderland appealed to his longtime love of railways. He was also excited about the prospect of creating fantasy versions of our reality.

In the two decades since, the Miniatur Wunderland team has grown to over 250 employees, include a skilled team of model builders who constantly plot new ways to thrill and delight visitors.

“Everyone has built some part of the layout, everyone feels like a little bit of [them], [their] heart, is in the layout,” says Dauscher.

There are also electricians on hand, and a team of technicians keeping tabs on day-to-day happenings from an in-house control room.

Frederik and Gerrit’s younger brother Sebastian Drechsler is also on board. Drechsler is over a decade younger than the twins, and says his childhood was mostly spent accidentally destroying his older brothers’ model railways.

Today, Drechsler is in charge of Miniatur Wunderland’s marketing. Meanwhile Frederik is the dreamer, and Gerrit is the doer.

“Freddy always had the big ideas, and I always had the solutions to make these ideas,” is how Gerrit puts it.

Building a model airport

The airport at Miniatur Wunderland is a recreation of the real Hamburg Airport.

Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg

Perhaps Frederik’s most ambitious idea…