Museum store in the Miniversum. / Játékbolt a Miniversumban.
MINIVERSUM, Budapest. I visited the model layout with my two youngest kids in October 2015. / Miniversum modell-terepasztal Budapesten az Andrássy úton. 2015. októberében jártam itt a két kisebb fiammal.
Miniversum is a gigantic, beautifully detailed and decorated model railroad layout featuring many landmarks from Budapest and Hungary – and a bit of Austria and Germany – scaled to 1:100 of original size. The Miniversum story started in August 2012 on the initiative of Attila Kocsis, who started to develop the concept of the exhibition and the business plan at this time. In Autumn 2012, a considerable investor was interested in our project and in 2013 a small group was formed that started to work on the construction. By May 2013, the technical and implementation plans for the Krausz castle on Andrássy street had been finished. Before the construction of the facilities, renovations had to be made to the building. They took over part of the Krausz castle in August 2013 and immediately started to create the layouts for the Austrian and German compositions. The Austrian and German layouts were a long way ahead of the Hungarian one: they constructed the frames for the layouts, laid down the rails, wired the electrics here first to create a rough landscape. At the beginning of December, a new phase of the construction began, where final elements, scenery and themes were created on the layout. Final landscaping lasted until the end of April 2014. During the construction 40 scale models arrived from a variety of modelers. Examples from Budapest are: Vajdahunyad castle, Heroes’ square, and Western railway station. The 9 months of construction saw several changes in the team: at the height of the project there were as many as 30 people taking part in the building process, half of them working at the venue and the other half at home.
