For 30 years, Stuttgart railwayman Wolfgang Frey devoted all his free time to his lifelong obsession: recreating his hometown in the decade of the 1980s. Unimpressed by those who criticized him and even called him a “weirdo”, he continued to build his model with all the materials he could get his hands on and with great attention to detail. He used a used lipstick to build a cement silo and pins as street lamps.
He put so much time and effort into his enterprise that his faithful replica of Stuttgart covered an astonishing 750 square meters. As it turned out, he had built the world’s largest replica of a city center, but no one – except himself – could see it. For fire safety reasons, the gigantic “Little Stuttgart” was not allowed to be exhibited in public, making it a local legend.
After Frey met an untimely death in 2012 at the age of 52, Herrenberg entrepreneur Rainer Braun bought the model layout from his widow. In 2017, he exhibited a smaller version in his hometown and has been trying to move it to Stuttgart’s city center ever since.
Not the Bonatzbau – but directly opposite
It was Braun’s express aim to exhibit such a faithful document of Stuttgart’s history directly at the main railway station – and thus also pay homage to the original builder. This would also attract many more visitors. Many railroad fans offered to help with the construction of “Little Stuttgart” in the Bonatzbau and Lord Mayor Frank Nopper (CDU) also spoke out in favor of displaying the model there.
However, the ongoing construction work proved to be an insurmountable obstacle – one that was circumvented by finding an alternative exhibition venue nearby. Directly in front of the station, in the former Hindenburgbau, there was an empty space that used to house a media market. An empty room that also offered more space for the model exhibition than the one in Herrenberg: 360 square meters to 300 square meters.
And as the Stuttgarter Zeitung reports, the move is already underway. The replica will be dismantled in January and set up in Stuttgart in February. The exhibition is therefore scheduled to begin in either March or April.
Anyone who has ever been to Herrenberg knows that Frey’s model makes it possible to see the many changes that the town has undergone. Thanks to him, it is still possible to admire the entire Bonatzbau as a terminus station and its complete track systems – along with many other details – as “Signal Box S” in miniature.