celebrity model rails

(snip regarding information on famous people with model railways)

Michael Gross (the actor who played the father in "Family Ties" about 20 years ago) is the only living one that immediately comes to mind.

Two that come to mind are Joe Regalbuto, the fellow that played Frank Fontana on Murphy Brown. Then there is Walt Disney and one of his early animators, Ward Kimball.

Ward and Joe were written up in RMC back when Joe was on Murphy Brown and when Ward passed away.

I'll add Rod Stewart and that short child actor from Different Strokes...

Here is a big list of celebrity model railroaders -

This page contains another list of celebrity mrr.

I once saw Mandy Patinkin's

Looks like there were some videos done on celebrity train layouts

There is Al Lowe, the creator of the Leisure Suit Larry games. This is from a recent CyberJoke email:

His humor web site is

I could use some help as many folks I meet at shows, etc. ask about well know public figures who are into this hobby. Be it sports, drama, politics, or whatever...........any help with identifying public figures who play with trains................past or present would be much appreciated. Example: Tom Snyder, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Mike Schmidt, Kurt Shilling, etc. I'm also planning a rather lengthy coffee table book on model railroading as a fine art and plan on interviewing as many of these folks as I can.......and of course the already established great modelers such as Bob Lawson, Bill Aldrich, George Sellios, Lou Sassi, and many others. Thank you HZ Howard Zane 5236 Thunder Hill Road Columbia, MD 21045 410-730-1036

That "child actor from Diff'rent Strokes" is Gary Coleman.

What about Sally Jesse Raphael, who had her own talk show until 2002 (?) She was/is into N scale, IIRC.

Dieter Zakas

Jazz musician Gil Melle used to write many articles for RMC.

Cartoonist Jim Scancarelli ("Gasoline Alley") has had his "Cliffside Railroad" featured in many Walthers' catalogs over the years.

Country singer Merle Haggard's HO layout was even shown on the back of one of his albums. ("My Love Affair With Trains", )

Don

-- snipped-for-privacy@prodigy.net

I could use some help as many folks I meet at shows, etc. ask about well know public figures who are into this hobby. Be it sports, drama, politics, or whatever...........any help with identifying public figures who play with trains................past or present would be much appreciated. Example: Tom Snyder, Frank Sinatra, Mel Torme, Mike Schmidt, Kurt Shilling, etc. I'm also planning a rather lengthy coffee table book on model railroading as a fine art and plan on interviewing as many of these folks as I can.......and of course the already established great modelers such as Bob Lawson, Bill Aldrich, George Sellios, Lou Sassi, and many others. Thank you HZ Howard Zane 5236 Thunder Hill Road Columbia, MD 21045 410-730-1036

Mandy Patinkin is a tinplate fanatic along with Tom Snyder. He was on Snyder's show about ten years ago and they spent most of the time talking about trains. It was cool. Sinatra also had tinplate. (Lionel). And Gary Coleman! He was on that celebrity dating show and took his date to the Belmont Shore club layout in Long Beach. It was a little bizarre.

-John

Buster Keaton had a huge 3-rail O-Scale layout.

I saw a show on Herman Göring on the History Channel. Seems he was huge into Model trains (he had layouts in all his homes)! It was anoying because the show kept saying he would escape to his "dream world" when he was running his layouts!

As opposed to living in the Nazi dream world?

Jay Americans have the best legislature money can buy. Unfortunately it's corporate money.

I once saw a documentary that claimed Göring was into cocaine and cross-dressing. That seems more dream-like than model railroads.

Kind of a cross between Siggie Freud and J. Edgar Hoover, eh?