Rod Stewart’s setup is bigger than most houses. Pete Waterman spends his evenings making miniature trees. Neil Young filled a barn with tunnels. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg
Rod Stewart’s train setup isn’t exactly the sort of thing you would find in a child’s bedroom. His epic Grand Street & Three Rivers City is a stunningly realistic 139 sq metre (1,500 sq ft) depiction of a mid-20th-century industrialised city. Based on 1940s Manhattan and Chicago, the labour of love – which has pride of place in his Beverly Hills mansion – includes skyscrapers up to 5ft tall, warehouses, bridges and rush-hour traffic, with period cars and lorries, reproduced sections of river and even a startlingly detailed miniature power station.
“It took me 23 years to build [and it’s] bigger than most people’s houses,” he told the Guardian in November. “It’s very expensive, but worth it, ’cos it’s my favourite hobby. I work on it every day.”
