NOW THAT’S A TRACK, JOOLS!
How the king of the keyboard squeezed 100ft of model railway and astonishingly detailed cityscapes into his castle attic...
ROCK stars’ t recreational ti l activities have often led them off the rails. But the opposite can be said of Jools Holland. For when he isn’t laying down a track in the recording studio or touring with his Rhythm and Blues Orchestra, Britain’s best- loved boogie-woogie pianist likes to relax with the incredible 100ft model railway in his attic.
He has been building the stunning set-up for some ten years.
It includes sections portraying parts of northern Europe, including a KGB headquarters in a Sixties rendition of Cold War Berlin, as well as more familiar representations of London through the ages, complete with landmark buildings such as the Post Office Tower, Greenwich Royal Observatory Ob t and d St Pancras station. t ti Glimpses of the project have been seen in the title sequence of his BBC2 music series Later . . . With Jools Holland, but now the full glory of the astonishingly detailed layout has been revealed in Railway Modeller magazine.
The article tells how the ‘wonderful world of miniature escapism’ lies at the top of a curved staircase at Holland’s home, Cooling Castle in Kent.
It is there that Holland, 60, who is married to the sculptor Christabel McEwen, likes to ‘ secretly steal himself away from the pressures of the real world’.
‘Fortunately, there isn’t a very good phone signal in here,’ he says.
Holland’s visits to the attic usually begin with some modelling before ‘settling down with a glass of wine to run a f few t trains i with ith some music i playing gently in the background’.
His passion stems back to his formative years in Greenwich, South East London, when, ‘as a boy, I began with a modest train set in the corner of a small room in a small house’.
By contrast, his huge current layout includes a stretch of water that represents both the River Thames and the English Channel and reaches a ‘tatty post-war London with its docks, pubs and bomb sites’.
Every 10ft or so, the scene moves chronologically through the decades up to the present day.
The model — built with the help of fellow enthusiasts and featuring buildings constructed from scratch and from kits — also includes an underground rail connection.
Holland, whose hits as a member of the th b band dS Squeeze i included ldd Up The h Junction, is not the only model railway fan from the world of rock and pop music.
Rod Stewart has previously told how ‘seven hours can fly by like 20 minutes’ when he is with his railway and revealed that Phil Collins, Neil Young, Frank Sinatra Jr and Roger Daltrey are big fans, too. Rod said: ‘It’s a wonderful hobby. I don’t know why people laugh at it.’