Copyright 2012 William P Turner/Poolsiderails.com
POOLSIDE RAILS
Where Paper Crafting and Model Railroading Collide
Special Project
How to Add People to Your HO Scale Vehicles
We work so hard to put engineers in our locomotive cabs and passengers in our coaches that we sometimes lose sight of the fact that those automobiles sitting at the crossing are empty. Adding drivers and passengers to your vehicles is fun and immensely rewarding.
Our drivers came from a massive crowd of unpainted people we got from MicroMark (www.micromark.com). They were impressively inexpensive, and their poses are pretty good.
Although you don't have to use a sitting person, you'll find that they're easier to work with than standing figures. In either case, you're going to have to whack off body parts to make them work.
Where you hack your figures depends a lot on the interior of the vehicle they're going to drive. Our car of choice for this demonstration is a Ford woody wagon. The 1949 Ford Woody, missing its front bumper, is marketed by a company called Kinsmart, and features a nifty pull back motor. It's also stamped 1/82 on the chassis. The car is held together by a tiny Phillips screw in the front and a tab that fits over the back bumper. It features a characteristically flat front bench seat. The little tiny steering wheel provides plenty of clearance, so the front seat offers a really nice driving position for our fellow.
Once our driver's legs were off, we test fit him in the seat. He fit perfectly -
It was necessary to sand down his keester a little bit. Think about it: when you sit in the car the seat compresses underneath you. The plastic seat in the model car of course offers no compression, so you have to sand the driver's backside down to compensate for it. We sanded the top of his head as well, as there was a little touch of sprue still sticking up there. When all is said and done, you want your driver's head to be the same height, even slightly shorter, than the top of the headrest. There's a little clearance above the top of the seat, so you don't have to be precise, but the closer the better.
As long as your hacking and sanding, this is a good time to reposition arms and heads. Our driver's left arm stretched off to his left side, and precluded his fitting inside the car's body shell. We used a sharp Xacto knife and hacked it off at the shoulder.
It is extremely important that you frequently test fit the interior, with the driver installed, inside the body shell with the windows in place. If the interior doesn't fit all the way inside you're going to have to sand your driver down so more.
You know the rules about painting figures; start with the lightest colors first, paint all of a color at a time (paint hands and face and neck at the same time). We found it easier to paint the back of the figure, attach him to the car, and then paint his front. Try to dress you figures in brighter colors. The interior of the car is dark, and the colors add a level of realistic detail for the observer. I used Delta Ceramcoat acrylic paints on my driver and his wife...the paint sticks well and is breathtakingly inexpensive. As they're forever trapped in their diecast Ford, weathering is not an issue.
As long as you've got the interior out and the paints at hand, this is a good time
to paint the carpet a darker color and wash the dashboard with very thin black or
brown paint. The white plastic interior on the Kinsmart Ford was extremely unrealistic.
A nice layer of burnt sienna, dry-
You can cut the legs a little longer on the passengers, as they're not blocked by the steering wheel. Painting those legs in bright colors, including flesh tones for shorts, adds a very realistic touch to the passenger side of the car.
Adding drivers and their friends is not difficult, and instantly improves the look of your vehicles. What's next on our list? Populating a city bus!
