Does anybody know of any companys that make historical figures in HO, or any scale. I want to model a train with the presidient giving a speech from the last car on the train, but I can’t find anyone who makes presidents. Or who wouldn’t want to have John Wayne on a western town in thier layout. I relize that a bigger scale would help; you can get a lot of detail and people like Teddy Roosevelt would stand out if you saw a HO figure giving a speech off the back of a train.
James[C):-)]
Try Priesr they have made a few oddball sets of figures over the years. Likely your best starting place save breaking out the contour putty. Rob
The problem is that such figures are scarcely recognzable in HO scale–a portly gent with brown hair and maybe a couple dots of silver paint for his glasses and a hint of moustache would be fine for Teddy Roosevelt, and any half-decent cowboy could feasibly be Joh Wayne.
I agree, figures in HO scale would hardly be recognizable (maybe Dolly Parton though!). Just paint them up and tell viewers who they are supposed to be.
Bob Boudreau
LOL! That would take quite a bit of contour putty, wouldn’t it Bob?
Or maybe you’d want to use silicone (bathtub caulk)
[;)]
There’s a pretty good catalog of Preiser figures with pictures at www.rocousa.com. DiscountTrainsOnline also has them, but I think the rocousa pictures are a bit better. You might look at something like an 1890’s wedding party for TR. A brass band would also fit in to a campaign whistle stop.
Rather than trying to make the figures recognizeable, you might want to add other visual clues, like campaign banners for Teddy, or a sign for a town that figured prominently in one of The Duke’s movies.
Check with wargaming figure manufacturers. It definitely IS possible to create visibly recognizable figures in small scales, even in ones smaller than HO! I’ve got several famous ACW generals that are slightly smaller than HO, and you can easily recognize who they are from an arm’s length.
A very popular wargaming “scale” is 15mm, which is roughly 1/100. Most 15mm figures are actually a tad larger than this (like 1/95th), so they don’t look out of place with HO scale equipment.
Try Musket Miniatures, Stone Mountain Miniatures, Old Glory, Minifigs, and Dixon. At least one of them makes a TR figure. Each also makes at least a small line of civilians and cowboys.
In the eighties Preiser made a set called I think “World Leaders” that included Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and several others. The figures are still made but I think they call them something else now, just “standing passengers” or something.
I believe the figure in the blue suit in the middle is the old Ronald Reagan figure, now being reused in another set.
You can also type in “HO scale figures”, and go on the internet, you will have four pages to choose from. Airfx, Greenway Products, Preiser, just to name a few. With a little painting to some of the figures, who knows maybe it is George Bush or Bill Clinton. On one site for Airfx, the portly fellow looks like a Teddy Roosevelt.
The WTRR
Hub City Division
Here’s another link, think this is the set I was thinking of, no longer called “world leaders” but “passers by”. I think the figure on the left is the Chancellor of Germany at that time (Helmut Kohl??), next is the French President (Giscard D’Estaing??), then Reagan, then…I think that’s supposed to be Queen Elizabeth, then the guy on the right is the then current UN head (Schroeder?? Think he was Austrian, some scandal when it came out he was in the SS during the war).
http://www.discounttrainsonline.com/Preiser-People-Figures-5-Pieces-Passers-By/item590-14125.html
Thanks a lot I’ll check it out.[:D]
How large a scale do you think is neccsrary to recognize people easily, we seem to disagree if you can or not tell who it is this small. The new Woodland Scenics models are pretty good. I mainly moddle the 1950’s and Regan was a great guy but a kid at the time I am modleing. I am investigating rolling the time of the layout back to the time of Teddy Roosevelt that is why I wanted him. Just in case you thought I thought Teddy was still around, too bad he wasn’t.
James[C):-)]
Lotus098: If you are modeling the 1950s, Reagan wasn’t a kid, he was an actor in his forties! He was born in 1911, and was a popular actor in TV and movies in the 1950s–you probably wouldn’t have much trouble finding an old movie poster with his face that you could scan and shrink down to put on an HO scale movie marquee sign!