http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/well-hello-mr-soul/
Just in case I was too wound up about making sure I was getting all I needed for a big rock-star profile, we stopped at the train barn for about an hour. This is a place where Young is supremely comfortable, a miniworld he built with his own two hands, where he controls everything with technology that he helped make. I found the layout baffling and thrilling — there were rocks and chunks of redwood from all over the ranch and he had let some of the verdant moss go dry to “model the drought” that was going on in the world at large. There were at least six different trains on hundreds of feet of track and when Young, with a little urging on my part, set everything to motion, we weren’t so much a journalist and subject as a couple of grown men on a caper, playing with a massive train set in the middle of the day. It was sort of magical in there and the fact that the guy who made it and ran it also wrote some of the most important songs in the rock canon seemed a little beside the point. It was hard not be charmed by the remarkable execution of a deep obsession.
Uncle Neil holes up in a shed and builds train dioramas? Who knew?