I’ve been a model railroader for about 40 years and I’ve been wondering lately about why we don’t see more racial diversity among our scale people. It seems infrequent that I see any skintones other than peach (representing caucasian) on prepainted people, and the occasional darker toned figures are painted an equally unrealistic color, or worse.
So I have a question for you fellow modelers: Have you come up with good recipes for mixing paint to represent folks with non-caucasian skin? What are the mixtures?
I also have a couple of suggestion for manufacturers:
Please add more diversity to your figure selections. I think there’s a market for it.
Paint manufacturers: How about a selection of skin tones? If you’re worried about hurting someone’s feelings, just give the colors numbers (i.e., Skin Tone 1, Skin Tone 2, etc.). We can look at the bottle and pick the colors that we need.
Woodland Scenics “Painters and Scaffolds” set and Preiser’s “Sitting on the Steps” set both have diverse skin tones. One set of “Engineers and Trainmen” (or whatever) does, too. These are some of the folks in the Preiser set:
I picked up some weathering powders in black and rust for doing rolling stock, autos and buildings. Someone also suggested lightly “weathering” figures, too. After giving them a quick blast of Dul-Cote, I brush on a hint of black to add highlights. I found that the rust-colored powder will give the figure a dark skin tone. It takes a bit of experimentation, but one beauty of weathering powder is that you can always wash it off and try again if you don’t like the results.
Almost hate to say this, but any scale people in the communities I model will be Japanese. Gaijin in back-country Japan in 1964 were about as common as polar bears in Panama. The only exception will be that one squirrely rail nut with the camera in one hand and the clipboard in the other.
Did I say I was planning to reproduce the situation exactly as I experienced it?
I remember seeing a paint mfg. that sold a wide variety of skin colors. They were more geared toward war gaming figures though. Don’t remember who it was.
Chuck, I presume you are the “squirrely rail nut.” In 1964, I assume most non-Japanese were American military personnel (yourself?) and Koreans. I doubt that has changed much, except for more foreign tourists. (“Gaijin,” does that translate as “barbarian”?) My understanding is that Japan does not welcome diversity. Tell me otherwise if that’s not so. I speculate that Japan welcomes foreigners as long as they don’t intend to stay permanently (no immigration allowed?). Is that generally true? And is it true that one has to show they are an “original Japanese” to be a citizen with full rights? If so, what does one have to show they are Japanese? Please reply directly to me if this is “off topic.”
You’re absolutely right. To be fair to the pre-painted-figure companies, it would no doubt considerably up their costs to add skin diversity. Also, different needs for different sections.
I am a military-miniatures painter in addition to model railroading, so as well as painting most of my HO figures myself (believe me, its a piece of cake compared with Napoleonic-era uniforms), I also paint different skin tones on pre-painted figures. I model Virginia in the late 40s / early 50s so its really whites and blacks. Humbrol chocolate brown is very good for African-Americans. I use some other shades from the Warhammer paint series which my son introduced me to.
For do-it-yourselfers: I have taken skin “swatches” from magazines (fashion usually) for matching paint mixes for figures. Just isolate the midtones, shadows, and highlights and you should get a pretty good representation of a particular skin type. I have also used this for computer graphics (easier to mix bits than paint, actually).
Oh, yeah, what does ‘gaijin’ mean anyway? I’m guessing that it is the same as ‘wairen’ in Chinese (Mandarin). That literally means ‘foreign person’. Of course, the implied meaning about the same as ‘foreigners’ when said by someone from my home region (GA, AL). There’s always an implied ‘d*mn’ before the word even if it’s omitted. [:)]
It would be refreshing to see a set of pre-painted figures produced, all of whom are black. It’s just reality; sometimes you don’t need mixed sets. I model the South, and a lot of the places the railroad goes that you just don’t need mixed sets.
My guess is that it’s probably an ultra-sensitive issue for model manufacturers.
IHC did a set of miniatures I picked up–an African-American preacher, mother and kids. I’m sure it is not the only such set. I’m hoping for a fairly diverse group of people on my layout: the area I’m modeling featured African-American, Japanese and Mexican neighborhoods, and I hope to model at least a little bit of them all.
Much depends on what and where you are modeling, but often the area closest to the railroad tracks was the cheapest area to rent, and closest to the factories where working-class people worked–so many ethnic communities sprang up near the tracks. Thus it makes sense that model railroaders would model those communities.
I’m sure it is a sensitive area. I feel that their lack of action is not helping. I would urge thm not to name the figures and paint colors by ethnicity, because they are bound to offend someone, and to be careful about stereotypes (the photo of the Native American figure above is an unfortunate example). We’ve seen various ethnicities represented in Barbies and Cabbage Patch Kids; I think the manufacturers are smart enough to improve this situation.
It’s up to us to create the demand for diversity in figures. When you see them, buy them. The manufacturers will catch on.
This is a Preiser set, the same one that the I showed a shot of earlier, with the characters in place “on stage” on my layout:
Odd, isn’t it, that a German company is making some of the best African-American figures?
Another thing to remember, though, is that it’s easier to darken up a Caucasian figure than it is to whiten up a dark-skinned one. This may be part of the manufacturers thought process.
Paint and weathering powders are cheap, and will last a long, long time. Again, if you want a more diverse population, it’s within your ability to do it. It’s all part of modelling.
“Odd, isn’t it, that a German company is making some of the best African-American figures?”
I sincerely doubt that the German company is making “African-Americans”.
There are dark skin people all over the world. Only in America do we feel the idiotic need to append the title “African” to them. Only in America do we feel that people of different ethnic heritage need to have that heritage made a part of their being. I, for one, feel we are all “Americans”.
I bet that German company has never heard the term African-German. lol [soapbox]
Now, where can I find some of those dark skin figures?
Good or bad, the United States is one of the MOST sensitive countries out there when it comes to racial diversity (we’re nowhere near where the Canadians are though). If you’re of Egyptian heritage and your family has lived in France for ten generations, you’re still an “Arab”, and you always will be to them (God help you if you call an Egyptian living in the USA an “African-American”, even though Egypt IS in Africa…). I’m not sure that I can type what the run of the mill African calls American blacks, so I won’t.
Getting back on track, the hobby DOES need more diversity in its figure packs, but not in the way that they’re doing so. Woodland Scenics has perhaps the best variety, but they mix up the races as if all the sets were to be used by post-1970 modelers. Sad truth is that for most of what we modelers like to model (the “transitional” era of roughly 1945-1965) segregation in ALL things was the order of the day. That most of us don’t model that correctly (I’ve never seen a “Whites Only” water fountain on a steam-era Southern layout, for example) is partially racism, partially the inability to find enough of the correct figures needed, partialy ignora
Yes, I think we would all be better off if we dropped terms like Native Americans, African-Americans and Chinese Americans, and just think of ourselves as one people, one nation.
(Laughing hysterically) That’s true. I had forgotten that. I wonder if they still teach that in school. Could have been worse… Picture living in the United States of Vespucci.
Agreed. A large eastern city is going to be much more diverse than a small midwest town. My little town I live in now is 98% white. The era you model could make a difference too. If you model southern states in the 40’s-50’s, you could be (unfortunately) prototypically accurate to have a sign that says “whites only”. Sad, but true.
