I am having a hard time finding people for my modern HO scale RR. I just want some figures that are wearing jeans and t shirts…I guess you could say middle class workers. All I can find are wearing some sort of weird hat and some sort of strange outfit. Anybody know of any figures I can purchace to fit what I need. And I also need some regular vehicles, the only ones I can find are F-150’s or Taursus, and I dont want a bunch of them. Thanks
Kurt
If you have access to a Walthers catalog, have a look in there. Preiser offers just about everything under the sun in regards to figures, and I have seen quite a few modern vehicles in the Walthers guide as well.
I like the Preiser offerings too, you can get 120 unpainted figures for $25-$30, and when you need to populate a mid to large size layout, thats a lot more economical than buying the pre painted figures. Woodland Scenics has pre painted figures too, they are pretty pricey for what you get but they do have a pretty good selection.
You might want to take a stroll down the diecast aisle at your local WallyMart, they have a lot of modern 1\87 scale vehicles for reasonable prices.
The 2008 Walthers HO Reference Book is available at many LHS with a list price of $9.98. There are over 30 pages of HO figures and 90 pages of vehicles.
Right now we (in HO scale) have a pretty decent supply of modern vehicles (some reason good priced die-cast ones, good detail for medium or back of the layout, and some very nice front of layout plastic vehicles, for a rather higher price) - we do NOT have modern-era Japanese sedans available in any number, which is a sticking point for me as they are the most common sedans in the US (well, most visible) from 1995 onward. European sedans, thems we gots…
As for the unpainted Presier figures, they are creations of 1980s Germany (I have both the standing set, and the seated set - there are others), and their attire can be a bit irksome (while you’ll find men wearing t-shirts & jeans, there lots of men wearing ties and jackets, too many wearing hats, too many women wearing dresses as opposed to the more common jeans & blouse, and I still haven’t figured out what to do with the female wearing legwarmers - have your knife & jewelers files out to do some clothing surgery). There are more modern painted figures out there, but those are a bit pricey too. Some of the more odd sitting people have become drivers in those modern die-cast cars I mentioned before (there are a number of figures cast to represent people in a beer-garden I think - mug/glass gets trimmed off and the outstretched arm is repositioned for the steering wheel - this necessitates slicing and trimming of their lower thighs & butts (lower legs/feet cut off), just filing until a thin portion of their upper thighs (the lap) remains as that will be visible if you look down into the model vehicle door windows.
Woodland Scenics makes tons of figures in casual dress that can be anything from the '50’s to today. As previously posted, Prieser also makes many. Cars are now more plentiful than ever. Busch makes US, European, and possibly Jap. Die cast are available at Walmart, Kmart (Hot wheels 1/87 - some modern if you can overlook slightly oversize wheels, and your LHS from LifeLike. Athern and Riko have released some really neat modern ones - a Dodge police car in different markings, Caddy Escalade, Chrysler 300, and many others - look at the Walthers web site. My [2c][2c] (4 cents because it’s a long reply)[8D]