After scimming through antonio’s thread about painting passenger car interiors and noticing mondo’s problem about people not fitting the seats prompts me to post this. Now be it known, I didn’t read every response to antonio’s thread so I may be stateing something here that has already been brought up but here goes. Let us remember that when we down size any object we have to make concessions. In other words it is darn near, if not impossible to successfully scale down a loco or car in every dimension and have it operate satisfactorily. If a manufactuer strives to produce a passenger car that will pass or scutiny as far as outside dimensions go, then by nature of the material used to replicate this car the interior has to be compromised. Hence the slightly smaller then scale seats, etc. I post this not as a complaint, but merely as an observation and a reason for the problems of HO figures not fitting an HO passenger car seat. I know this may be “old hat” to some but may not be to others, Ken
There must be something going on somewhere that isn’t correct. Not only passenger car seats, but seats in locos, cars and trucks, etc. never can accommodate the model figures. Either the seating is underscale, or the figures are overscale. This has been like this for quite some time, in all kinds of models from many different firms.
I recently got an On30 Bachmann railtruck. Great model in all respects. It came with a sitting figure separately that could be added to the cab. The instructions tell you to cut off the legs to make it fit. This can sort of be understood, as the floorspace in the model isn’t as great as it would be in the prototype. I had to cut off not only his legs, but half his posterior to make it fit in the drivers’ seat. I had thought of maybe adding one of my finer detailed O scale figures instead of the factory supplied one, but they too were way too big - the supplied figure looked to be about the size of a young boy rather than an adult. Even with its smaller size the figure still sits with his head above the top of the side and front windows - his head is up in the roof section!
Wazzup anyway?
Bob Boudreau
Funny, but I have commented elsewhere that I think the HO figures marketed by WS are too SMALL!! When you look at their engineer figures beside a BLI Hudson, there’s just no way, for my view. Not that I have ever photo’d a person near a J1, but the figure seem very small. Yet, I found that I had to “modify” the structures a bit in order to add them to all of my HO locos.
I think the cabs must be undersized, or something.
One thing that’s happening is that cast in cushions and springs don’t compress, and neither does the posterior of your figure. All of those non-compressible parts add up, so your figure will definitely be sitting higher in the model.
The other is probably related to slightly out-of-scale proportions for parts and figures. It may be too small a difference for us to notice, but again, it adds up to things not fitting where they should.
-Ed
Fundy, not being real familiar with the Bachmann railtruck, I suspect that Wazzup is this. You stated that the floor space is smaller than the prototype. I would guess that the floor is probably higher also to make room for the frame and running gear under the model causing the seat to be higher than usual. It’s one of those “compromises”. The "floor board is a good example of what I’ve been trying to say. How thick is a floorboard in a full size vehicle, and how thick is the floor board in an HO scale vehicle. If it was scaled down would probably be thinner than tinfoil. We may have an exact scale vehicle on the out side, however the inside has to be made for room for the motor and gears and electronics and weights that the prototype didn’t have, plus the vehicle has to be structurally strong enough for us to handle. Compromise again!! Ken
