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Who make the best affordable 4mm figures?


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I’ve just returned to railway modelling following a 40yr absence. A RM magazine junior Modeller of the moth in (I think around) 1980. I’m seeing some phenomenal advances in detail yet very little has changed with figures (passengers, crew, staff). Dapol are using the same OKish moulds from my 1970s modelling. At a trade stall in the recent Manchester MRS show I found some 3D printed figures - amazing but unaffordable at £5 each. Most bizarrely you can now buy about 100 painted figures from China - also a fiver but an absolute disgrace in quality. My question is - who makes good detailed, affordable unpainted figures these days and when will the 3D ‘super figures’ become comfortably affordable? What figures do most modellers use?

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Older mouldings such as Airfix or Peco Railscene, which you are no doubt aware of already, tend to feature figures in frozen action poses, and 3D prints from the likes of Modelu, despite the expense, are much more naturally positioned, not to mention much more finely detailed.  I have a Modelu driver leaning out of the cab on one of my locos and his jacket is hanging open as it hangs forward on him.  Modelu figures seem to represent the hunched and growth stunted working classes better than the handsome upright figures of yore as well; they have much more character.  You can even pose for one yourself if you are a show they are scanning at; all their products are scans of real people.

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I like the Langley ones, although they dearer than a lot of plastics.  You can buy footplate crew that fit in Hornby Terriers.  They also footplate crew in the old  "pill-box" type caps, in case you have any locos in Victorian or Edwardian livery.  They have quite a lot suitable for pre-grouping or Big Four layouts.  I would say that the level of casting is quite good.  There are a lot of white metal 15mm wargames figures around that need a lot more tidying up with knife and file.

 

http://www.langley-models.co.uk/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_OO_Scale__1_76th____HO_Scale__1_87th__Kits_8.html

 

Must admit that for passengers for coaches, I am getting a bit less fussy about the figures that I use, except when headgear or lack of it would be important.  Once, I bought a couple of Mainline paneled early LMS coaches, added metal wheels and Kadees, and put in some cheap plastic figures that I believe were made in China.   I joked about the coaches representing an excursion from Chinatown in Liverpool.  (The figures all had black hair and a yellowish skin tone.)  The difference between using bargain basement figures for seated passengers compared with using reasonable figures is not really noticeable if you don't have lights in the coaches.  The main exception is that I believe that hats and caps tended to be different in Victorian and Edwardian times, so I would still use decent figures, at least near windows.

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The answer is to mix and match. If you need a large crowd for a football crowd at the back of the layout, a big bagfull of cheap'n'cheerful figures from China will probably do. Then move up in expense as you move towards the front of the layout where the detail will be seen, and for special cameo scenes. The cheap ones from China are also useful for populating carriages and buses, as the detail is not seen, and their smaller size makes then easier to fit.

 

Langley figures clean up quite nicely, and there are better metal ones in pewter, but for the most natural poses, 3D scanning is pretty much unbeatable.

 

For 3D scanned, ModelU are very nice. Hardy's Hobbies also do 3D scanned figured, cheaper than ModelU, but less well defined (in 2mm/ft scale at least).

 

ModelU 2mm/ft

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Hardy's Hobbies 2mm/ft

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Langley 4mm/ft (the train 'driver' is a ModelU scan of me)

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Andrew C Stadden pewter figures - 4mm/ft

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For the currently fashionable 3d figures, Hardys Hobbies @ £3 each are considerably cheaper than Modelu (£4.50) and if there is indeed any difference in detail I don't think it makes any difference in 4mm scale.   Monty's Models from Dart Castings are white metal, reasonably detailed, and £1.80 each.  My own view when dealing with 4mm scale is that the way that figures are painted is every bit as important as the level of detail.

 

DT

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I have say I had good service from Hardy's Hobbies. They have some nicely posed workmen shovelling, that I need for my coal yard, but they did not affer them in 2mm/ft scale because the shovels are to fragile. I knew I could get etched metal shovels (e.g. from Severn Models) so they printed me a special order with the shovels editted out. I have not completed painting and fitting them yet, though.

 

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I personally find Monty's figures very characterful. I also like Andrew Stadden's for the Victorian/Edwardian era. The old Dapol ones are, IMO, quite underrated - a decent repaint will give you a model that stands comparison with the likes of Stadden and Monty's. But in general I prefer to mix and match - cheapo figures from China, suitably repainted, are fine for populating carriages, crowd scenes and anywhere else where people won't be looking too hard at each individual person.

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I model a South Wales mining valley terminus, and cheat a bit.  Such stations seem from photos to be bleak and deserted most of the time.  Valleys weather does not encourage hanging about in the open!  The majority of the locals live within a couple hundred yards of the station, and can hear the train approaching.  So, I have some passengers sitting aboard the trains, but none on the platform or anywhere else.  When the train arrives, passengers get off and disperse, and the outgoing passengers don’t turn up until a minute or two before departure to stay out of the rain. There are a group of railwaymen who have been having a discussion about something for the last two years, with no sign of a resolution yet, a foreman looking chap in a dustcoat on trading estate loading platform, all Modelu, and loco crews, Modelu and Bachmann mixed.   
 

The presence of humanity is inferred rather than modelled; open or ajar doors, bicycles leaning against fences, a bag left on a seat, a ladder left propped against a wall, and, a future project, lighting in buildings to suggest dull and gloomy weather.  
 

Sheep are everywhere of course; this is the Valleys after all!  One is even leaving the gents, having found nothing of interest to her in there...

Edited by The Johnster
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I've always gone for figures being static ie leaning on post, sitting on bench, dog asleep not running, otherwise it all looks like the Pompeii museum. 

 

Figures: the old Airfix range is useful, and made of soft plastic. Example: US Civil War Union infantry gave me multiple footplate crew. Scalpel down the hat into a railman's cap, chop off rucksack/gun etc et voila. For poses it's a hot nail to bend limbs & torsoes. I once turned a Subbuteo goalkeeper into Jose Mourinho, suit n tie, tearing his hair out doing that^.

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The Dapol ex Airfix figures in hard plastic take some beating. OK you have to weed out some of the more heroic poses, or carve them about, but they look like real people. For Victorian figures I like the sets that came with the Days Gone diecast series of vehicles. They look to have been sculpted by the same hand as the Airfix figures. They're in soft plastic which can be hard to paint. However if a primer coat of PVA is brushed over first then enamels take a treat. The Days Gone figures are crisp enough to take this extra layer without loosing definition.

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I have a good mixture of people on the layout including AC Stadden (best metal figures IMO), Prieser, Noch TT (back of layout), Dapol (very well made), Langley (not great detail), Dart Castings (very nice animals and very good people), ModelU (best figures.....saved mostly for my loco's), cheap Dart casting coach passengers (probably casting rejects but they do the job), and I recently purchased a bag of 100 seated figures from Ebay (very poor detail, no features, all bright colours etc so will need repainting).

 

IMO Best value would probably be between Dart and Dapol. With the Dapol ones its easy enough to change heads, poses etc so they look different. 

 

Men by shed - AC Stadden

Farm people - Noch TT

Church people - Noch TT

Station - Dapol figures

Coach - mixture of Dart & other plastic seated passengers (picked up from a show)

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Edited by ianLMS
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On 20/01/2020 at 13:39, Ian Morgan said:

The answer is to mix and match. If you need a large crowd for a football crowd at the back of the layout, a big bagfull of cheap'n'cheerful figures from China will probably do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I bought a bag of those cheap Chinese figures, and the majority were not 4mm/ft scale. Many were far too tall to look realistic on a layout, even when painted. 

 

I ended up chopping the feet off the sitting figures and used them as passengers in carriages where the 'amputees' would not be seen in enough detail. 

 

I would never buy any more. 

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If its figures going into a coach, then use some of the less expensive ones around, if its the odd figure in a very prominent position buy the best you can afford, as said use H0 ones in the background and also to vary the height

 

Keep a eye on eBay if you need figures in bulk, go for bulk lots or second hand whitemetal ones if reasonably priced.

 

Unless you are modeling Asian railways keep away from cheap Asian figures

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5 hours ago, jonny777 said:

 

 

I bought a bag of those cheap Chinese figures, and the majority were not 4mm/ft scale. Many were far too tall to look realistic on a layout, even when painted. 

 

I ended up chopping the feet off the sitting figures and used them as passengers in carriages where the 'amputees' would not be seen in enough detail. 

 

I would never buy any more. 

I bought a bag recently, as you say some odd sizes included but when “weathered down” and hidden inside a carriage they fulfil the criteria of getting bums on seats.......just don’t look too hard!

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I picked up a bag of white metal loco figures at a local swap meet last year which I have just got around to painting and I’m very impressed with the detail on them and would like to purchase more. If anyone knows of the source for them could they let us know. I’ve spent a lot of time looking online to no avail.

IMG_8309.jpeg

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