As model railroaders go... (Score 4, Informative)

Jack Burgess is considered to be one of the all-time greats. His layout and the quality of his modeling are as good as any found anywhere. If you are involved in the hobby in any way you have most likely heard of him. It's a multi-faceted hobby; some like the modeling, some like the history, some like 'operations' which involves a small group of operators who try to run the layout like a real railroad, and some like the electronics. You can even write your own Java apps to control the layout - http://jmri.sourceforge.net/ - some guys are doing it with Linux. For more examples of some outstanding layouts search on George Sellios or Howard Zane.