HO shelp layout, DCC and sound 50"s era. Its at the point of constrution now where the small touches are needed like figures to bring the scenes alive. Since its all industrial, I need all kind of workers which are either hard to find or expensive. E Bay don"t have too many and I have never used e bay before. I think about 40 or 50 used painted workers (all kinds) would about do it. Any suggestions? anybody selling any? People on this forum I trust.
Thanks, DON
Get the Walthers sale flyer. Sign yourself up, and they’ll mail you a copy every month, or your LHS may have them as giveaways. You can look at it online now, too, but I personally prefer the printed copy. They have a lot of different figures on sale every month. (The sale price is in effect for two months, so get last month’s flyer, too, if you can.) Look for railway workers, track workers, etc. Look at the figures, not the names of the set. For example, “Smoke Jumpers” would work pretty well as miners or construction hard-hats.
Unpainted figures are a lot cheaper. It’s time-consuming, but that level of detail painting isn’t all that difficult.
This Preiser set is on sale right now at Walthers:
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/590-16326
It looks like you get around a hundred (!) “trades people” for the sale price of $29.95. Being Preiser models, they’re probably very good castings. When you’re sitting around watching the football game on Sunday, grab a handful of figures and some craft paint and go to town.
Presier unpainted figures are very good and quite reasonable for the price, but will require a bit of work with knife, file & sandpaper to remove flash & mold-lines (not that bad as they are styrene and carve/sand nicely).
Also, there are a number of websites for wargamers (I know, but hear me out) who have to paint lots of miniature figures, and so they have developed fast-painting techniques which would work well for painting lots of HO figures for medium & background position (some techniques are good for foreground too) - search for such fast painting miniature sites, and chose which techniques (there are several) you’d like to try…
Cheap poor looking figures can really make your model scene look like crap. I prefer preiser myself, even over woodland scenics. Like the above poster said, buy the unpainted figures or walthers also offers painted figures in sets of 36 or more for less than 40 dollars. You get what you pay for.
Theres nothing worse than a close up shot of some hideous glop of plastic thats supposed to represent the human race. Lifelike is off my list.
Preiser are the best, I sometimes use cheaper folks especially where they won’t be that easy to see (like say a passenger car interior).
IIRC I calculated once (going by list price) that painted Preiser figures in HO are about $1.00 each, and undecorated ones are about 5 cents each. If you shop around you can often find undec groups for much less than list price. Preiser makes an undec set of USA figures that might be a good place to start, although most of their other figures are generic enough to work on a US layout. (Preiser is a German company.)
That must have been some time ago. With the current foreign exchange rates and inflation, Preiser figures in sets are now 2-3 dollars per figure. That seems awfully high to me. I’ve also noticed that Woodland Scenics figures have improved over the last year or so, to the point where they’re almost comparable, and significantly cheaper, too.
For those who have bought unpainted Preiser sets, are all of the figures unique, or do you get a lot of duplicates?
Yep. I’ve noticed Priesers have about tripled in price lately. I know a guy on E Bay that 72 piece sets of various RR workers, passengers and general people for $9.99/set if your up to painting your own. These are Model Power unpainted figures.
Both John Allen and a boyhood friend of mine who I will not name built up their own figures, using dental wax over wire armatures.
Skinny undecorated figures can be bulked up before painting. Hard hats, fedoras and berets can be put on otherwise bare heads. You don’t have to settle for the limited selections offered by manufacturers.
In my modeling location during my modeling era, a lot of outdoor work (everything from farming to road construction) was done by women wearing baggy blue (with white polka-dot) pajamas and conical bamboo hats. Try finding them at your LHS!
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I brought the Passer-bys and Sitting figures sets, and generally there are 2 duplicates of each figure, sometimes 3, due to the sprue sets included - but then there were some speciality spurs so you got some unique figures (I remember at least the Bridal party and some people in winter coats were unique) - on the other hand, I think I got 3 or 4 of the woman drinking tea and a guy waving, so I modified 2 of each to fit in some vehicles as passengers…
Most replies are correct in using “good” figures" so you may have to pay a little more, preiser figs are good but very pricey, other figures will give you the “gumby " look, out of proportion and men with 54” arms.
I’ve had much success on eBay (no bad experiences in over 200 transactions) and bought a bunch of unpainted figures there (usually for less that a quarter a head). Painting them is kind of mind-numbing, but it is an opportunity to involve some friends (even non-model railroaders). I use white glue to glue them to sticks of wood in groups of about 5, then I have at it. I can paint about 20 in a couple of hours. Be sure to spray them with dullcoat before you put them on your layout (except for my head and a few that are similar, prototype people are not shiny). After the painting is done, break them off the stick and paint their shoes.
I’ve also found some nice painted figures at train shows with good prices (about .50/head).
I usually buy from Cherry Creek. I modify with a little paint and make sure the ones with the same pose are not near each other.
For train crews, I buy from Yardbird Trains. He has a decent variety, steam era.
More difficult for me as I model 1900.
http://cchobbies.com/hoscale/figures/figurespreiser100.htm
I have seen people pay more on ebay, especially for Preiser.
Rich
One more thing…well, at least for now.
Some figures (such as Lifelike) seem to be made of some odd plastic which is a royal pain to work with (as I said in a prior post, most figures, even from Preiser, have some molding lines, flash, ‘tags’, etc, and this material was a bear to work with - I have an old Lifelike set (the urban figures with the bald man w/ hat, woman carrying grocery bag, guy on motor scooter), and a new set (woman in raincoat, jogger, etc), and both took a lot of work to modify (strip paint w/ Goo-Gone, of all things, and slowly file & fill w/ CA…and heavy amounts of cursing is required too…If you’re gonna modify figures, stick w/ the styrene (and easily modifiable/gluable/sandable) Presier figures.
Try Larrys Hobbys in Houston, they had/have all there Prieser HO figures on sale.
Larry’s Hobbies
(281) 443-7373
Ask for Jim in the train dept.
Mark
Don’t rule out Atlas figures. A box of 24 unpainted ones is cheap.
Well, if you shop around you can find Preiser unpainted figures for a similar price and they’re better looking than Model Power…though I have used some Model Power figures, they’re not bad generally.
**wjstix-**Look at those prices and quanilties on that Walthers page. Their 72 person unpainted sets have gone up over $30.(they were $10 6 months ago) Most of those are 5-9 person sets for $25!![:O]
One of those is 5 unpainted firemen for $37. Priesers have really gone through the roof lately.
More like the dollar has gone down into the basement, past the train layout and burrowed through the cement floor. This makes anything priced in Euros more expensive.
I was a bit surprised at some of those prices, but they’re I think newer more specialized sets. The bigger undec sets have gone up in price but aren’t all that pricey. The old standby (so to speak) seated figure set right now is $27.98 for 120 figures at Walthers. You should be able to find it for even less if you shop around hobby shops, flea markets and the internet.
Main point is that overall the undec ones still generally cost only a fraction of what the painted ones cost.
The current Walthers catalogue has quite a few unpainted Preiser figures for some pretty reasonable prices.
Also, check out some of the larger WS sets–they offer painted figures in lots of about 100 or so for a relatively reasonable price. I seem to have seen a set of construction and railroad workers available. As I recall, the price was about $40, which boils down to less than a dollar per figure.
Tom