Twin brothers Frederick and Gerrit Braun, 41, began work on the ‘Miniatur Wunderland’ in 2000

The set covers six regions including America , Switzerland , Scandinavia , Germany and the Austrian Alps

The American section features giant models of the Rocky Mountains, Everglades, Grand Canyon …

…and Mount Rushmore

The Swiss section has a mini-Matterhorn

The Scandinavian part has a 4ft long passenger ship floating in a ‘fjord’

It is expected to be finished in 2014, when the train set will cover more than 1,800 square meters (19, 376 sq ft)
and feature almost 13 miles of track, by which time detailed models of parts of France, Italy and the UK will have been added

It comprises 700 trains with more than 10,000 carriages and wagons
The longest train is 46ft long

The scenery includes 900 signals, 2,800 buildings, 4,000 cars – many with illuminated headlights.. .

…and 160,000 individually designed figures

Thousands of kilograms of steel and wood was used to construct the scenery…

The 250,000 lights are rigged up to a system which mimics night and day by automatically turning them on and off

The whole system is controlled from a massive high-tech nerve centre

In total the set has taken 500,000 hours and more than �8 million to put together, the vast majority of which has come from ticket sales