All figured out

you’ve created the model railway, but now you need to make your cast of miniature figures act like the real thing.

Populating a layout seems to be a modelling blind spot. Layouts either have too few people or too many, and in unrealistic poses or situations. It’s a bit easier in larger scales, where the quality of the figures is higher, but there’s a real dearth of quality figures in ‘OO’. There are exceptions, of course, such as Bachmann’s Scenecraft range. Many modellers opt for either smaller ‘HO’ scale figures from European manufacturers, or worse: those bulk packs of underscale people, some in ridiculously unhelpful poses, manufactured in some Far Eastern country. I’m certainly not anti-‘ho’, but mixing of scales should only be considered for aesthetic reasons, such as achieving a forced perspective effect. But more of that later on. Many people populate their layouts by simply plonking figures on it, without sparing a thought for plausibility. When you consider placing a figure, always bear in mind the following: What activity is a particular figure, or group of figures, undertaking? Where did that person come from? What is each person doing, and what are they about to do? If it’s a group of people, how are they interacting with each other? The main image - Terence Cuneo’s painting Track Laying by Night - amply illustrates this. Look at the image and you’ll see the group of men, bottom left, with tools at the ready. Or they could be on a break and awaiting the next task. The figures on the crane are almost static. The supervisors are quite static too, completely opposite to the platelayers manipulating the rails. In this case, pay attention to the position of their limbs, the angles of their heads, and so on. But no matter how good it is, this is still a painting. Let’s study some real railway workers and see what can be transferred to model form: