Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: model

The original Prague Vytopna restaurant was actually this one, on Vaclavske Namesti. I've actually forgotten if I've ever been inside, but I don't think so. There was also a location in Brno, which is said to have been the original location in 2009, but it has since closed. The Vaclavske Namesti location was still open when I researched this caption in 2024, however.

There are actually two Vytopna locations in Prague, one here, in the Palladium Shopping Centre, and another one on Vaclavske Namesti (plus another one in Vienna, in Austria). This is a railway-themed restaurant, with mostly American-inspired food like burgers (even if the trains are mostly Czech and European), and a large G-Scale model train layout integrated into the restaurant. This is the case in both the Palladium and Vaclavske Namesti locations. The trains are computer-controlled, using a similar system to that used on the (real-life) Docklands Light Railway in London, with a signal wire down the middle of the track. This is so that they can be used to deliver drinks to the tables, although they are too small (in spite of being G-scale) to deliver food. One thing their small size doesn't impact much is their speed, as they can operate at up to 20 Km/h, comparable to real 19th-Century freight trains (at least in the United States). This means that they're hard to photograph without a good camera with a fast sensor or film. This is one of my better shots from this visit in 2015, where I managed to catch one of the gondolas loaded with two full 500ml beer glasses. Empty beer glasses also generally return to the bar via rail.

The model railway in Vytopna also has station buildings, although they're purely decorative. This station is for "Stare Brno," which is probably a reference not so much to the city of Brno (as Brno doesn't have a station by that name), but more likely the Starobrno beer brand. Despite this, when I was there Vytopna was mostly serving Krusovice, which is brewed in the city of the same name (historically, from 1581 to 1685, Krusovice was the royal brewery of Bohemia, and has passed through various owners since).

I'm not sure whether to be surprised at finding this. If I'm not mistaken, this isn't a Lionel 700E Hudson, but I could be mistaken. I mostly notice that it doesn't have the little bare metal whistle, so it's probably from MTH or some other manufacturer. It did appear to be O Scale, though (unless my eyes were bad and it was S).

I don't know what company makes this CD 380 Class (I think it's HO or OO Scale), but whoever released it they were absolutely up to date. At the time of my visit to the muzeum, the real Class 380 electrics were so new that they hadn't ventured out of the Ostrava area yet, although now they work some of the services into Praha Hlavni Nadrazi.

The model train display was much larger than just the Merkur tinplate sets. Here we can see a variety of makes and scales.

Merkur are better known for their erector sets, but at one time they also built tinplate toy trains. I'm not sure about the scale of these, but they could be O. They look close to it, anyway. Does anybody know? Nowadays Merkur specialise in TT Scale, although their website only had track the last time I looked.

Here's another model of the museum, this one of the exterior.

Several of the museum's normal exhibits remained open for the 1968 exhibition, including a series of models of the museum itself, which is indeed an impressive building. This model depicts to the frame and interior for part of the roof.

This is, in actual fact, only a model. It's one of the most accurate model locomotives I've ever seen, and the only notable flaw I can see with it is that the "soot" around the chimney (smokestack) just looks like a finger smudge or spilled model cement. I think it was in O Scale, but I'm not sure since I don't remember, and in any case the model is far too good to identify as one scale or another based solely on a photograph.