Fantastic Layout Tour of the Largest Model Railroad in Ukraine

Pilentum Television feels very happy and proud to be one of the first YouTube channels to present the largest model railroad layout in Eastern Europe. In collaboration with the staff of „Miniland Ukraine“, we created a layout tour to show Pilentum’s viewers this beautiful miniature world, which was constructed in HO scale (1/87).

Almost unnoticed, construction of the largest model railway layout in Ukraine began in December 2019. In March 2020, a team of model builders and model railway enthusiasts set to work and created the first railway module. A total of 37 railway modules were planned, which would later form a model railway layout with a total area of 87 square meters. Despite the pandemic and the war, all work was completed in November 2022. Since then, Ukraine’s largest model railroad museum is located in the “Blockbuster Shopping Mall” in the capital city of Kiev.

The wish of those model builders and model railway enthusiasts was to create a miniature world consisting of authentic Ukrainian landscapes, villages, towns, industrial facilities, mountains, special buildings and unique scale models. In addition to the railway, there are also miniature cars, a coal mine and a power plant. Similar to “Miniatur Wunderland” in Hamburg (Germany) or “Mini World Lyon” (France), a special lighting system simulates day and night.

One of the special buildings is the large railway station in Ivano-Frankivsk, a central transport hub in western Ukraine, where national and international train connections start and end. The construction of the station building took four months. Almost all of the objects were created by hand because there are no kits available for Ukrainian buildings. Many details were created using a 3D printer.

One of the oldest cinemas in Kiev, which was in operation from 1911 to 2010, was also rebuilt in miniature. Not only the cinema building, but also the interior was recreated, so that real films are shown on the screen in the small cinema hall. The entire miniature world is full of life: There is a wedding celebration, restaurants, pharmacies, and grocery stores in the city. Cars, fire trucks, buses, and trams travel on the streets. Traffic is regulated by traffic lights and by an intelligent software control based on German technology.

The model railway layout also features rivers and lakes filled with real water. The water in the lake and in the mountain river with a water mill must be constantly cleaned, for which filters and pumps are used. The coal mine in Donbass has also been rebuilt in miniature. There, the coal is slowly loaded onto large coal trains and transported to the power station.

However, the most impressive features are the Ukrainian trains and locomotives. Nowhere else is there such a large collection of rolling stock from the Ukrainian railway company. For one of the largest model railways in Eastern Europe, most of the locomotives and railway cars have to be manufactured and painted by hand. As there are hardly any manufacturers of Ukrainian railway models, a team of six people was busy making the appropriate railway carriages themselves or modifying purchased models.

Let me summarize the facts in a few words: The model railroad layout is installed on an area of 87 square meters. A track length of 510 meters is currently available for model trains. There are 95 meters of roads available for miniature cars. In the cities, villages and on the roads, 1,465 miniature figures, 137 buildings, and 4,374 model trees are used. For rail traffic, 152 switches and 124 signals are used. The rolling stock consists of 156 railroad cars and 35 locomotives.

*Miniland Ukraine*

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