Power to the Little People

Here we have a nice summer scene at Catcott before the little people moved in, the bus is driverless, there are no passengers, the engine has no crew, no animals, not even the omnipresent Bob Geeza Cat. What, no cat!?

This photograph from a few years ago does show how adding figures to our model railways brings life, for this scene would be so much better if it had a few people in it. I must admit it’s only since The 2020/2 Zombie Apocalypse of Doom that I started adding little people to my layouts, the delay being mostly due to a hatred of painting them to be honest. But then I discovered that my wife is rather good at performing such. 

Of course there are ready painted figures available, but due to the then pre war Ministry of Miniature Misery adopting OO rather than HO (probably just to be awkward and the fact that our miniature engineering wasn’t as good as that from the other side of the water), many of the mass produced ready painted inch high folk are slightly less than inch high because they’re ‘HO’ which is 1/87 as opposed to our bloated 1/76 ‘OO’ running on the same 16.5mm track. As well as being slightly smaller, they’re often far too skinny to represent the average beer, pie, curry, pizza & post pub kebab loving Brit - I most likely being one of them. 

In the various photos posted here over the last few years, none of the inch high folk are glued into place. For me, half the fun is being able to move them around - photography yielding more interest than running sessions. Useful tip, dab a little Pritt Stick (other glue stick brands are available) under their tiny feet, and you should be able to get them to stand up, certainly long enough to grab a photo or two. Running a flat file under their feet in advance helps too, for not all supplied little people and animals leave the factory flat footed, or flat pawd 🐾

~~~🍻~~~

If you enjoy these posts .. www.buymeacoffee.com/Nevardmedi3 cheers 🍻