As some of you might remember, I build a quite big model railway some time ago.
Last year it had to move due to rebuilding my hobby-room into a proper home office. 
Sadly some of the electronics did not "survive" the transport to my parents house and the damage was too big to be repaired properly.
However I took this as a chance to rebuild the whole thing. Smaller in size, but better in detail.

This time, I took the old Hamburg harbour (Germany) from the 1950s-1960s as example


![hhla142_v-contentxl.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/wirago/243qH4gsiKus431VTEFHBMXXevmxK8pWsqHNBLX4QrnCkZbJFA324iZ6FyrhAMFcuKT5x.jpg)
*Hamburg harbour early 1900s*

So I sat down to the planning again. Given the lessons I learned from my previous project, I came up with the following crucial points:

- Smaller in size (~210x120cm)
- Canal trough the city
- Each building illuminated
- Easier track layout and thus easier to maintain
- All parts of the track accessible

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![HamburgerHafen-Eisenbahn.jpeg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/wirago/23y94QEuHvXxLK3UstJ822KUeTTYvPQMDKN6bNtZcegvjLUoatiWrQyiBXC49kAp3Vuw7.jpeg)
*Hamburg harbour early 1900s*

<hr>


![plan1.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/wirago/23yTxKH78wWrQUtvSG9XmKG31fQtP6pGYb38ZLitYwiPaSfbQL8FXVA9jP1pFhNaG2J16.png)
*Top View*

![snapshot.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/wirago/23yJT58JABSJUPRvK99gn7CYP1K7xdDd3xCyXvexq3k7NeZy43g3AsygVkovu613h9r4Y.jpg)
*3D View*

The plans look ridiculous, right? 😀
Actually, the only important thing on this plan is the track layout, to make sure there is enough space for the required turnig radius for bigger locomotives (which is wider than you would expect) and that there is enough room for the track switches while beeing close enough to the water.

The harbour part could look a bit like this when finished, although I plan to make it a bit more... "industrial"


![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/wirago/23wC9ZG7z7aZt4MVd47a5bswyg8LwxYwcjgFxtgQ26A98oTKzgjQUCpYu5RQnDsaLhvV8.png)
<a href="https://www.pennula.de/">Source</a>

The biggest challenge is going to be to create a good looking sea. Modelling realistic water is in my opinion one of the hardest tasks in building models.


![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/wirago/EpVB666kMUebqzP9WiDYf5Pj9NY7Gicao8QnVy3Ed2RPe7kaYfDY4VAaLiQfaLWxjWt.png)
*Will probably need a few tries to make it look as agood as this example. Especially because the water surface is quite big (about 150x30cm)*

However, I am looking forward to start building and facing new challenges which will be more of an artistic than electronic nature compared to last time.