Famous model builders

According to an item in an early 1960's issue of Airfix Magazine, Roy Orbison was a modeller. The item reported that his UK fan club had bought him a lot of Airfix kits and presented them to him during a UK tour.

Gordon McLaughlin

How about railway (railroad) modellers?

Neil Young is part-owner of Lionel, a model railroad company. He is an enthusiastic modeller as well.

Pete Waterman (record producer for Kylie Minogue and many others) also owns a model railway company. Oh, and he owns a number of full-size locomotives as well.

Bruce Springsteen, Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Elton John, Roger Daltrey and Rod Stewart are all railway modellers. Rod's US layout was recently featured in a model railroad magazine.

Aircraft modellers:

Gary Numan - he also owns a Harvard.

Patrick Moore

James Doohan (Scotty in "Star Trek").

I bet Lemmy's favourite aircraft is the Heinkel He111 :-)

John F. Kennedy. He had a collection of ship models.

Stephen "FPilot" Bierce/IPMS #35922 {Sig Quotes Removed on Request}

I was reading a little bio on Jimmy Stewart a while ago that mentioned that according to their children, a favorite past time of Stewart and best friend Henry Fonda was sitting down together and building model airplanes. That shouldn't come as a huge surprise given Stewart's Air Force background and degree in architecture, but for some reason it does. Maybe it's the part where they actually made a point of getting together to work on them.

Which begs the question - who are some other famous modelers and have you ever seen an example of their work? I can't think of a single one.

WmB

Safe bet, that one.

Former race car driver and automotive writer Sam Posey is not only a model rail roader but wrote a good book about it: "Playing With Trains".

Jack G.

Ditto former TransAm racer Sam Posey - he and his son are big time hands-on model railroaders and even made "Workin' on the Railroad" on the DITY Network a few years back.

Cookie Sewell

Mel Torme

RR modellers - sure thing. On that count toss in Mandy Patinkin. He's a bigtime rail roader - saw a spot on him on cable a few years back.

WmB

Didn't I hear Walt Disney was one, too?

As was Walt Disney.....

for a dollar a day?

Just finished reading 1776 (McCoullough) and it mentioned that King George III was a ship-model lover.. didn't say if he was a builder or just collector.

--- Stephen

Hmmmm... No one has mentioned Hermann Goering, who had quite a model railroad layout.

Of course, he also had a 1:1 air force to play with as well.

Andy

i hear he hd a pretty good art collection. i really like the fact that his vemeer was a fake. he payed a lot for it and it was his favorite painting. apparenty when an allied art expert told him it was a forgery, he was more bummed than when told he would be tried for war crimes. where did you hear about model trains? i've never read that in a bio. i don't doubt you in the least, i'm just surprised that none of the so-called experts even mentioned it. i bet he had all the good marklin's and lionel rarities.

Yeh, but he couldn't play nicely with others, so he ended up breaking most of 'em.

Goedendag

I remember seeing a picture of Emerson Fitipaldi flying a fixed pixed Schlüter Huey attack helicopter. Airton Senna flew RC fixed wing. Also a picture of Mike Oldfield at home, or in his studio, with RC planes behind him.

Vriendelijke groeten ;-) Ron van Sommeren near Nijmegen, the Netherlands