I read the same thing about Clancy and his personal Pullman car :~D
I don't remember which Clancy novel it was that had the story line with the tree, an old growth tree that starts in the forest being selected for cutting, with long descriptions of why it was the perfect and blessed tree, to be loaded on a ship, to serve as a major beam in a Japanese temple. You read along wondering how it was possibly going to connect with the story, and it's only role was that it fell off the boat in a storm and was randomly hit by a submarine.
Victor Hugo did that a bit. F'r'instance, in Les Miserables, he wrote a several-pages-long account of the Battle of Waterloo (and allegedly got bits of it wrong, but oh well) just to bring about a conversation and a life-debt owed between Sergeant Thenardier (he of the inn) and Colonel Pontmercy (Marius' father).
I don't know how well that survived in the musical (ptui! feh!*).
*Just my opinion; please don't be offended.