Sir Rod gave me reason to believe my model railway needed a bigger stage, says Holland
‘He advised me to put my train set in the biggest room as it would bring me great happiness’
JOOLS HOLLAND’S model railway is as almost as legendary as his boogie-woogie piano playing.
The 100ft train set features Belgian mansions, Paris’s red light district and even the blitzed East End of London. And it came about after some encouragement from a fellow performer: singer Sir Rod Stewart.
Holland said the former Faces singer had advised him to steam ahead with the hobby as it would bring him great joy.
“I took the advice of Rod Stewart, who’s got an enormous one. He said, put your train set in the biggest room available and it’ll bring you great happiness. And he was right,” the keyboard player told The Observer.
Holland’s passion for trains started when he was a youngster in the 1960s. His father built a small set for him in the family’s cramped terraced house in Greenwich, south-east London, and over the years, he has to fed his passion by building bigger and bigger sets in sheds and basements.
But it was a chance encounter with Stewart in the early 2000s that was the “big turning point”, he wrote last year in Model Railroader magazine. “I told him about my 5ft x 12ft set-up and how I was considering starting again in a larger room. He listened and gave me some very good pieces of advice.
“Firstly, he told me, the layout must be placed in the largest room available. This, he assured me, was because even with the biggest layouts, the modeller still has to make compromises and compress certain scenes.
“Secondly, and most importantly, he said the act of creating a large model brings enormous happiness and a sense of wellbeing to the builder,” Holland added.
His model railway eventually grew to more than 600 model miles at his Kent mansion and takes in the best Europe has to offer. He has created a little London, a little Europe, and a little Eurostar, while 100ft of track runs to both sides of his attic in a giant U-shape. Holland told The Observer he was fortunate to have had parents who nurtured his passion for old blues music, gospel and classical. However, he admitted to having he a less amicable relationship with his school teachers.
“I wasn’t expelled from school [I] was ‘invited not to come back’. I felt I’d benefited enough from school once I had learned from my very wonderful, elderly music teacher, Mr Pixley.”