Hobby Heaven

By Stephanie Clifford/New York

Driving down 1525 West, a quiet road in Farmington, Utah, you pass meditative cows, grassy fields, a few modest houses. Then, on the west side of the road, a mirage looms: 10.5 acres of colorful, pint-size railroad trains chugging out of a replica 1920s station house, snaking through tunnels, over bridges, past waterfalls and man-made mountains. Here live Steve Flanders and his accommodating wife Susan, who over eight years watched her husband turn their farm--and her carefully tended flower beds--into a model-railroad park.

It seems that Flanders, 50, a retired concrete producer, has taken his hobby to an extreme. It began harmlessly enough when he laid a picturesque model-train track in his backyard; his wife's pretty tulips remained intact for the most part. Then he decided that the trains needed indoor storage, and he ran the track into the barn. After that he added rails over the driveway, and before long, he was digging a 4-ft.-wide strip across the yard. From there the park has kept growing and growing. "It's just, as we started building things and we kept going, I couldn't figure out a place to stop. As I sit here and work on the track and the property, I've got more ideas than I'll ever be able to build as far as expanding it," he says. Good for train buffs, bad for Susan Flanders' flowers.

Sure, hobbies and retirement go hand in hand, as quilting grandmas and golfing grandpas will attest. For some, however, hobbies go from a mere distraction to a full-blown obsession, invigorating enthusiasts from train lovers to map collectors. Indeed, some experts believe there's a significant health benefit to be gained by immersion in a passion. "What gets a person out of [depression] is when you're engaged in a stimulating endeavor," says Bernard Landis, 77, a psychologist-psychoanalyst. Six years ago, he cut back his practice and enrolled in art school, and this May he graduated with a B.F.A. in painting and drawing. "You meet people, you open up new doors, and it just changes the chemistry. I'm sure it even affects the immune system. It's such a breath of fresh air."

Consider Carol Lee Lindner, a Haverford, Pa., housewife, who says her life changed several years ago, when she discovered dragon-boat racing--competition among colorful boats, each with 20 paddlers, a drummer and a steerer. She put together Philadelphia's first women's team, then organized an annual 1,400-competitor dragon-boat festival in the city, complete with an athletes' village and an awards ceremony. "At some point, you share the gifts you have with others, and that's where I am at 63," she says.

Giving back is the impetus for a lot of these older hobbyists. David Rumsey, 59, spent two decades collecting antiquarian maps. In 1996, having amassed a remarkable 150,000 maps, Rumsey realized he wanted to leave some sort of legacy. He decided to put the collection on the Internet, and so far has scanned and cataloged 9,000 maps at www.davidrumsey.com one of the largest such online collections in the world.

Others, like Joe Weaver, will leave less tangible legacies. Weaver, a wiry Tai Chi enthusiast who moved into a Dallas retirement home last fall, was dismayed to find that its Tai Chi classes consisted of residents sitting and waving their arms around. Though he just turned 90, he leads several Tai Chi and water-aerobics classes at the home. "At this stage in my life, I'm blessed with good health and have some ability in the world of exercise, and if I share or transfer that to other people, it's going to do good for me directly, and it's going to help those people," he says. "As a result, I'm going to gain satisfaction that I wasn't even seeking."

But getting too emotionally connected to your pastime can also drive you a little nuts, as soft-spoken nurse Stella Henry, 56, can tell you. She's on a quest to round out her 500-strong Beanie Baby collection. Among her tactics: spending evenings frantically refreshing eBay pages; lining up a source at Nordstrom's who hides new models for her; driving from her Los Angeles home to San Diego and Santa Barbara, Calif., to follow up on rumors of Beanie supply; attending Beanie conventions; and frequenting a tiny Barstow, Calif., shop where she finds rare Beanies. "It's a supplier. It's like drugs!" she laughs. With display cases in her living room, a Beanie MasterCard, magazine subscriptions, T shirts, mugs and pens, and clothes for the toys, Henry knows she's somewhat infatuated. "It ends up this crazy competitive thing," she says.

Dick Rennick, 60, and most others find, though, that a major benefit of such hobbies is stress relief. As a high schooler he cruised his town's hamburger stand in a roaring '53 Ford, juiced up with parts from the local junkyard. As a young man, with no money for a garage, he would jack up cars in his yard and tinker with them. Then, as his plumbing company grew successful, he found that cars offered an escape from work stress. "When you come home at 11 p.m., and you're wound up, you go in the garage, get your wrenches, start working on stuff. Your hands get a little bloody, a little dirty, and you're ready for bed at 1 a.m.," he says, perhaps explaining why, in Rennick's custom-built Yucca Valley, Calif., home, the garage is bigger than the house. (Hey, something has to house the 1948 Minnesota fire truck he just bought.)

Rennick's day job and hobby are closely related; it's not uncommon for hobbyists to choose pastimes similar to their work. Some even use hobbies as an excuse to put off retirement, like New Yorker Arnold Greenberg, 68. Eighteen years ago, the onetime lawyer bought a popular travel bookstore on New York City's Madison Avenue. Now he works five days a week, covering his acquisitions in clear Mylar covers and talking with buyers about Baedeker's guides. He has no thoughts of stopping. "I just signed a new lease. Let's just hope I live that long!" he says with a chuckle. As you grow older, he says, "the big mistake you make is to stop doing what you like doing."

A maxim that Flanders couldn't agree with more. His farm of colorful trains seemed so peculiar in his rural town that it became a tourist attraction. He offers rides six days a week and opens Flanders' fields to onlookers. "This is where my heart is right now," he explains. That's the simple key to why people spend so much time on their hobbies: they love them. "Not to say it's not a lot of work and doesn't have its struggles and trials, but I just cannot imagine doing anything else," Flanders says. "I literally feel like I'm living out my dream."