Passengers for a passenger train?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Someone mentioned having empty passenger cars as not very real looking.

I caluated I need somewhere between 100-250 sitting HO size people to make my cars look 50% occupied.

Any ideas for the best supplier. Out of all the ones I’ve found there appears to be only 15-20 sitting figures. I guess I good cut and paste others to appear to sit otherwise it will look like a Steven King train with 300 of the same figure, yikes.

Any ideas?

Jon - Las Vegas

2

Actually if you get a bunch of the same figure, painting them differently can do a lot to make them LOOK different–most folks aren’t going to be able to carefully examine the passengers of each car. Plus, generally you don’t need that many miniatures in a car to give the impression of a full car.

3

walthers sells a passenger car insert that models the people sitting in their seats…look it up at the walthers website or in their catalog…Chuck

4

Preiser sells packages of sitting people, unpainted. I think there are a hundred or more to a package. Check with Walthers, they have them illustrated in their catalog.

Bob Boudreau

5

Here’s some good news: There’s plenty of seated people available!
Just check out the 2005 Walther’s Catalog

Preiser:------ Catalog Pages: 650, 651, 655, 656, 653

Woodlawn Scenics:---------Catalog Page 663

That’s easily 100+! They look good! No need to hassle over painting.

Hope this helps! [:)][:D][8D][;)]

6

http://www.rocousa.com/preiser.asp
Don’t know how updated their 2005 inventory is but they have 40+ pages
of listings. Scroll down to Preiser Data Base.

7

Thanks for all the info

Jon - Las Vegas

8

Another idea - model some of the window shades partly or fully down (as if people were sleeping behind them). While this is especially common on overnight trains, you see it at trackside even on short corridor trains. Use small pieces of appropriately colour cardstock for the shades. And of course you don’t need miniature passengers behind those shades…

Jim

9

You could do the old "Lionel’ trick of painting some figures in black on some white sheet plastic, seemed to look real "not ". I would think there would be a pile of people on a crowded coach, remember now, there were 2 people to a double seat—you do want to be accurate----don’t forget the “newsie” regardless, there were a lot of people on those trains, imagine a passenger train with 10 or 15 coaches, that’s a lot of people, also the dining car too!. have fun.