Model Railway Forum

Hi Everyone,
I've seen some interesting-looking unpainted Preiser HO figures on the internet and I'm wondering if anyone could answer a few general questions about their figures.

Question 1. Do Preiser figures come readymade in one piece (like Dapol figures) or do you have to stick each one together from pieces ( like some of Noch's figures)?

Question 2. Is there much plastic to cut / file away where the plastic has leaked out of the join where the two pieces of the mould meet?

Question 3. Do they look realistic, and not too small next to OO scale figures?

The first two questions are not small points as the pack I'm interested in contains 130 figures, which would make a very long and tiresome preparation time, even before I would start to paint them. The specific pack that I've got my eye on is 16343 Passers by - spectators although any information about their figures would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance, Ian Alan

IMHO there is enough difference in size to be noticeable - compare OO and HO figures in a shop if you can to see if you can live with it.
Can’t answer the ‘flash’ question, but when I paint my figures I tend to do them in batches of ten - each batch takes well over two hours.

Many thanks for the reply Steve. Regarding the difference of scale, I was thinking of either mixing them up in crowds or putting the scaler figures at the rear parts of the layout. I've done a mixture of this already (plus painting smaller figures in school uniforms to represent adolescents) and it seems to work for me, but 130 more figures may be too much to get away with.

I've done mass production of painting figures before (about 60 figures) and it's been okay (I'm a patient sort of fellow). I start with white (shirts), then the flesh colours. I leave them to dry and then do grey, brown, dark blue, 'black' varying the shades in one massive blow out session. That takes care of most of the males and the females just need a bit more brightening up on top of that with more 'girly' colours added to these. Then I drink a beer.

It's the cutting and filing away of surplus plastic that I don't want to face again (my patience ends there).

You’re welcome Ian, but you’re painting them all wrong - faces first, shirts second.

Mixing them up and putting the smaller one side to the rear is a great way of getting round the problem - forced perspective. These days I tend to buy 3D printed figures but that’s prohibitively expensive for groups. I have used HO figures when I added a crew to a Wickham trolley as OO wouldn’t fit.

Depending on the figure and its clothing HO figures can often be passed off as teenagers who are seemingly largely overlooked in OO with figures being full sized adults or small children. People in any case come in all sizes but many HO figures, as with some OO ones, can look supersuper model thin.

In answer to question a 1 this guide from Gaugmaster might be of use as he's using the Preiser figures from a pack of 120.

Many thanks for your replies gentlemen. The close up photos of the Preiser figures look very good and a bit more robust than the Noch HO figures that I recently bought which are painfully thin. Exactly as MP mentioned 'supermodel' thin. That said, this afternoon I was walking home behind a school girl, and I was surprised that she could walk at all as her legs were so thin. As MP said, people do come in many shapes and sizes, but I'm not sure that I want my layout entirely taken over by teenagers!

I had a bit of a job finding the Gaugemaster info so hopefully this link will take you there

https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/magen ... paint.html

https://www.gaugemasterretail.com/magen ... aint2.html

Certainly worth a look around the archives

Rgds

Blimey he seems to like painting women.

Hopefully Ian has found what he wanted after 6 months.

Interesting links though.

I thought I'd turned to "Page 3"! As you say an interesting link(s).

These figures are very good - a bit expensive, but a very good range - https://hardyshobbies.co.uk/

They do 0 gauge Brian.