Just looking at pictures of the Miniatur Wunderland — a $10 million, 9,600-square-foot train set in Hamburg, Germany — you may mistake it for a living, breathing place. Several places, in fact, including its native Hamburg, and America (complete with an Area 51), Scandinavia and Austria — all painstakingly recreated down to the major landmarks, working traffic and ships and, of course, trains. Soon there will even be an airport. It's all part of an expansion planned for 2014, that will see Miniatur Wunderland add 36,000 feet of track to the almost 30,000 feet already in place, as well as doubling the set's $10 million price tag.

I could go on forever. The Miniatur Wunderland has a pretty darn impressive list of numbers, from track length to the number of traffic signals — see the list for yourself.

Check out the gallery below to get your tour of started (especially that last picture — Miniatur Wunderland has a control room that rivals NORAD).

Via Miniatur Wunderland