Nice, I'm impressed. How'd

Nice, I'm impressed. How'd they do that?

I'd also never seen a bowling-ball-return style of staging (2nd video, 0:31-0:39). I guess it works better with 2-axle very-short cars.

Bike Rider

The animation on the bicycle rider is amazing. Any idea how they did that?

I'm guessing

I'm guessing it was done with the Faller Car System. Pretty cool stuff!

  http://www.faller.de/App/WebObjects/XSeMIPS.woa/cms/page/pid.14.17.109/agid.1138/ecm.ag/Starter-sets.html

I saw somewhere

how that was done, and I believe Kevin is correct.  If you want to see more amazing things like this, check out the Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg.  The new airport is phenomenal.  Gerrits Tagebuch has been doing a video diary of the work on the new airport module.  This is the latest episode (21) - but I've watched them all and the technology (and applicability to model railroading) is very cool.    

Classic Annimation

Get the speeds right and the Faller Car System looks great.  Classic "white line following" technology in the model railroad!  The Faller System uses a wire IIRC.  Used in the right way, a great enhancement to the realism of any layout, IMO.

Amazing

That is amazing. Thanks for posting.

Roy

Miniatur Wunderland...

whilst I agree a 100% that Miniatur Wunderland is phenomenal on technology and a "in your face" representation of model railroading, my heart  and respect goes out for 200% to that little guy with his little bicycle, well more to the modeler who made it happen.

OMG Amazing. How do they do

OMG Amazing. How do they do it? Now I'll look at my lil static townsfolk in a different light.

Faller car system

How it works at:

http://www.midlandred.info/faller.shtml

http://germanrail.8.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=1915

Just amazing.

does anyone have any info on

does anyone have any info on the mechanics behind these?

in one video it looks like there is a clear disc near the pedals but they look to be geared differently???

The Faller system still

The Faller system still requires a motor in the vehicle, and there is clearly no room for a motor, let alone a battery on the bike.  I suspect there is a magnet under the road being moved along on a track of some sort and the metal of the bike is standing in the magnetic field somehow.  The pedals are turned by the clear disk which is rolling on the road surface.  It's a remarkable animation, no matter how it's done.

The bowling ball return staging only works if the train is a permanent unit and the train is essentially a conveyor belt.  It works as a background for the road traffic quite well, but isn't practical for regular layout traffic.