TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 23, 2021 Share Posted January 23, 2021 THis question comes about after a discussion in the new Hornby 4/6 wheel coach topic. Someone asked, "Why bother with coach lighting? What's the point unless you run a night scene?" I replied that my exhibition layout is Chinese HO which I realise is a VERY niche interest and if I wanted to get plenty of exhibition invites I would need to make my layout attractive to a wider audience than just visitors with an interest in Chinese railways. One thing I did was to fully exploit the detailed interiors of the Bachmann HO coaches. The interior comes molded in just one colour and so I painted the interiors and put hundreds of HO people inside - it took days/weeks/months. At our next show my team of operators proactively pointed out this USP. Result? Nothing, as the coaches were unlit and even when the added detail was pointed out to visitors they couldn't really see it. So, I decided to light the coaches so that viewers could see the detail. Result? Excellent reactions from viewers. This has led me to ask, 1. How many of us really exploit the detailed coach interiors which RTR manufacturers provide these days? By that I mean painting the interiors and adding passengers. 2. How many then light the coaches so that viewers can really appreciate the work we've done? 1 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium ColinK Posted January 23, 2021 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 23, 2021 I’ve recently done loads on work on my coaches. Interiors painted, passengers fitted and lights installed (all battery powered except for one coach which came fitted with pick-ups), then weathered. 5 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 24, 2021 Author Share Posted January 24, 2021 10 hours ago, ColinK said: I’ve recently done loads on work on my coaches. Interiors painted, passengers fitted and lights installed (all battery powered except for one coach which came fitted with pick-ups), then weathered. Can we see some interiors please? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold phil_sutters Posted January 24, 2021 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 24, 2021 There is a great article in the current Model Railway Journal (issue 281) by Alan Webber on building and populating an LNER Quad Art set. He used his own cardboard cutout figures to ensure that he got the look he wanted - the right period clothing and typical commuter poses with people reading newspapers etc. In 4mm scale the layering of four five or six people across the compartment meant that the 2D format of the figures wasn't really obvious. The ones nearer the windows were seated at a slight angled, which helped the visual effect. 2 1 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Darius43 Posted January 24, 2021 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 24, 2021 I recently fitted a Dapol 12 wheel LMS dining coach with Comet brass sides and took the opportunity to improve the Dapol interior with painted seats, tables and passengers etc. Cheers Darius 7 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 24, 2021 Author Share Posted January 24, 2021 (edited) 33 minutes ago, phil_sutters said: He used his own cardboard cutout figures to ensure that he got the look he wanted - the right period clothing and typical commuter poses with people reading newspapers etc. In 4mm scale the layering of four five or six people across the compartment meant that the 2D format of the figures wasn't really obvious. Interesting! I think that there is a problem with HO interiors (and I assume OO ones) The interiors are (it appears to me) narrower than scale as the thickness of the sides and glazing of plastic RTR are seriously overscale. Hence it's virtually impossible to get plastic figures to sit next to each other as the seats aren't wide enough. Edited January 24, 2021 by TEAMYAKIMA 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 24, 2021 Author Share Posted January 24, 2021 Just for the record, here is my HO dining car 5 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Darius43 Posted January 24, 2021 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 24, 2021 (edited) 9 minutes ago, TEAMYAKIMA said: it's virtually impossible to get plastic figures to sit next to each other as the seats aren't wide enough. It’s fairly prototypical in the case of the seats on the new Thameslink 700 units. Darius Edited January 24, 2021 by Darius43 2 1 1 5 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BernardTPM Posted January 24, 2021 Share Posted January 24, 2021 Not lit, but in this case the passengers are quite visible anyway: 2 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravenser Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 I do paint coach interiors when I'm reworking /upgrading vehicles. That said - I'm not sure passengers are particularly noticeable in compartment stock. And I only ever fit a small sprinkling of passengers, as befits a train awaiting departure in 5 -10 minutes time I currently have 3 coaches being worked on - ex LIMA Kk1 TSO (was SK till I switched the interior) , Triang -Hornby Mk1 BSK to be modified to courier van, and vintage Hornby Mk2a BFK (or it will be...). I've painted the interiors for all three, and "paintbrush modelling" seemed to take an awful long time. I'm rather dreading painting up some figures for the TSO. And I've taken an executive decision that the compartments of the BFK and the sole compartment of the courier van are too dark and likely to be too sparsely populated to make the effort of painting and fitting figures worthwhile..... However painting the interiors to remove the raw white /tan brown of the mouldings and replace with a variety of authentic colours is worthwhile, and makes a noticeable improvement - especially in the TSO 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 25, 2021 Author Share Posted January 25, 2021 On 24/01/2021 at 10:07, BernardTPM said: Not lit, but in this case the passengers are quite visible anyway: Excellent work. Please don't misunderstand my next comment, but in a way this is slightly off topic. You are a kit/scratchbuilder and so to an extent that was not the angle I was looking from. My point was more that RTR manufacturers go to great lengths to provide us with detailed interiors these days - how do we as buyers exploit that? 1. Do we just leave them as they are supplied - one colour, no lighting. no passengers 2. Do we (buyers) fully exploit all the work that RTR manufacturers have already done for us and paint the details different appropriate colours, add passengers, lighting etc In short, in many ways the RTR manufacturers have done the 'difficult' bits for us, do we take advantage of that? 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BernardTPM Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 One thing my picture does show: window size (and therefore light) is an important factor. There is someone in the compartment section, but they're not that visible. Before I scratchbuilt that (way back in 1977) I had done conversions and upgrades on RTR 00. In that respect the old printed Peco (for Kitmaster Mk.1 kits) were a fairly simple way to get a good effect. Lighting back then was rare but even so, an impresion of the correct colours, rather than a single (and often too light) coloured interior moulding, was worthwhile. Keep up the good work! 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Vecchio Posted January 25, 2021 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 25, 2021 (edited) Paul, I am a fan of drivers in locomotives and passengers in coaches. And I do this since a long time. Just some examples: Found a cheap narrow gauge coach, didn't even have seats... and here we go. I use a battery system with latched reed switch on these coaches. Works a treat, batteries are accessible without opening the coach. 20201006_184313 20201006_195203 20201009_174226 20201009_183510 20201009_180647 Or another example - I recently found a 10 year old but never used push-pull train at Hattons. This Roco Transalpine is prepeared for coach lights, there are conductive couplings through all but the last coaches. (The last one is a driving coach and has its own decoder because of the directional headlights - so there is also power for the coach lights) 20201119_161223 20201120_160617 20201120_160719 the last one is a short video in Flickr. You need to click into the picture to get there. 20201120_154417 And last but not least - when I had my Italian layout in the past I put more than 100 people per coach - they were double decker commuter coaches, and always packed. How do I know? Well I worked 11 years in Milan and used these trains almost every day... DSC05335 Edited January 25, 2021 by Vecchio some photo hickups... 5 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Vecchio Posted January 25, 2021 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 25, 2021 On 24/01/2021 at 09:01, TEAMYAKIMA said: Interesting! I think that there is a problem with HO interiors (and I assume OO ones) The interiors are (it appears to me) narrower than scale as the thickness of the sides and glazing of plastic RTR are seriously overscale. Hence it's virtually impossible to get plastic figures to sit next to each other as the seats aren't wide enough. I use unpainted, sitting H0 people produced in China - very cheap from E-Bay. They come in bags of hundred, they are not as detailed as Preiser, Noch etc. but a lot cheaper - and what is important: slightly smaller. But correct, even whith these it is difficult to use all places in a coach. The Austrian Transalpine train may be an exception - they had traditional only 3 passengers next to each other in a compartment coach or 2 plus one in a standard coach. And coming back to Paul's China - was on a bus with my ex-wife some 25 years ago on the island of Lantau - where a European bus would have 2+2 seats in a row the Chinese bus had 3+3.... Neiter I nor my ex wife were slim, so there was no way 3 could sit in a row.... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoonMonkey Posted January 25, 2021 Share Posted January 25, 2021 Hi, funnily enough, I just reassembled a coach this evening - my first attempt to 'do up' a coach interior. It was really to see how it went, to learn skills, and to see if it was worth it for my other coaches. It's been one of those back burner tasks while I've been doing other stuff. I chose a Bachmann GWR coach. It's been a bit of fiddly work to get the compartment interiors sorted, but now I've done it once the next ones should be quicker. I painted the insides, although the masking on the compartment walls was tricky so I resorted to using a strip of plasticard and painting it along the midway line, and glueing in the strips so they butt up against the molded seats. I cut down some Sankey Scenics coach pictures so they would go three abreast the compartment dividing walls because they are too big as they come in the pack (for this purpose, I mean). I also cut some small rectangles of silver cooking foil, same size as the pictures, to vary the look. I painted up some figures (Modelu ones for the most part), making sure I did a pretty good job because I was keen to see if the detailed paint (and therefore the effort) is worth it. They were stuck in with tacky wax for now until I'm content that no changes are required. For the lighting, I initially tried to use the TrainTech ones but these proved to be tricky to fit into the compartment coach as they are fixed units. So I tried hacking one about and it worked initially but I frazzled the terminals on the lighting strip while trying to solder wires between the battery compartment and the actual lighting strip (that, however, was probably my duff soldering that evening!). I gave up with the TrainTech ones, although I would be willing to use them in future, it's just that I couldn't make them work with my level of skill in terms of adapting them to suite my own purpose. I therefore tried one from layouts4u, a battery one with the reed switch. I soldered the components together and it worked fine (fortunately I remembered to buy a magnet wand to make the switches work). The battery and holder goes in the toilet cubicle which can't be seen from outside. Once the strip and wiring was stuck to the roof interior, I painted over it with black acrylic paint (obviously not over the actual lights!). I needed to trim the top of the compartment dividing walls with zuron cutters. I also used these cutters to trim out the floor of the toilet cubicle to allow the battery and holder to fit in ok. All that cutting sounds tricky but was actually easy and took less than 5 minutes. I think that was pretty much it. The coach was reassembled and popped onto the track. I've added a few photos to show the interior before it went into the coach, and a few from outside in the dark. I have station lights so I do have it on at night, so the lighting is worth it from that perspective. If I wasn't going to have lights on at night, it possibly wouldn't be worth it. I haven't had chance to look at it in daylight yet to see how obvious the passengers and interior are (with and without the lighting switched on). I'm a bit maxed out at the moment so probably won't be able to respond immediately to any responses, but I'll keep an eye on the thread in case I can be of help to anyone. So to answer the exam question... I'm relatively new to this kind of thing. Yes I've now done up the interior of an RTR coach, yes I've added lighting. And do you know what? I really like it. As a bonus, the magnetic wand for the layouts4u reed switch is great fun, both me and my boy love it. You waft the magnet over the coach and the lights turn on and off. Simple joy, it made us smile. 8 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 26, 2021 Author Share Posted January 26, 2021 9 hours ago, MoonMonkey said: Hi, funnily enough, I just reassembled a coach this evening - my first attempt to 'do up' a coach interior. Congrats - just the kind of thing I was thinking about when I started this thread 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 26, 2021 Author Share Posted January 26, 2021 18 hours ago, Vecchio said: And last but not least - when I had my Italian layout in the past I put more than 100 people per coach - they were double decker commuter coaches, and always packed. How do I know? Well I worked 11 years in Milan and used these trains almost every day... DSC05335 100 per coach - very impressive. I am working on two single decker trains at the moment, but I have decided not to add people to the double decker trains because I think it will just be too much work (impossible) to get lights in both levels and having all the top decks lit and the lower levels not lit will just look odd. I regret that unlike your FS coaches my Chinese double deckers don't have windows in the roof. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Waverley West Posted January 26, 2021 Share Posted January 26, 2021 (edited) I really enjoy running my layout in the dark, especially in winter when it is dark outside so much of the time. It's almost like another layout. Detailing and lighting coaches really adds to this I think. Here's a Bachmann Mk 2f fitted with passengers, corridor connections, coach letter labels, window destination labels and, in 1st class, curtains and antimacassars. I also add newspapers and other paraphernalia on the tables. When I fit lights myself, I use the ESU units fitted with a power pack, completely eliminating flicker altogether. As an added touch, I like to fit a window-hanging gricer at the window just behind the loco in some of my coaches... Add in some lit buildings and street lights and you have another world. It's very easy to concentrate on locos, but spending some time on coaches really pays dividend I think. Edited January 26, 2021 by Waverley West 14 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 26, 2021 Author Share Posted January 26, 2021 Obviously the internal layout of my coaches differs somewhat with many British coaches. but one thing I think is very worthwhile whether or not I add lighting and figues is painting the tables. Despite the poor quality of this phone camera shot I think you will all agree that just painting the tables will make viewers aware that there is an interior as the jump out at you even in an unlit coach. This is my next project a hard class sleeper - to be fully lit and figures added - wish me luck! 7 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Vecchio Posted January 26, 2021 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 26, 2021 Wow, so many poeple sleeping in one coach - reminds me at my army service time.... Hopefully thye smell is better in the coach. So you need 66 little fellows and some kind of blankets. Looking forward how it comes out. I remember going from Milan to Vienna in a nighttrain in a 4-bed compartment (Cheap). It was a nightmare. Didn't close an eye. Nowadays (before the pandemic) easy jet is cheaper and of course quicker... I will watch this space. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 28, 2021 Author Share Posted January 28, 2021 As some of you know, I can be extremely anal when it comes to my modelling. I think it's because I am not a talented modeller (e.g. I don't make my own locos, I don't make brass kits) and therefore to compensate I take the simple things which I do attempt to extreme levels. I am taking the modelling inside the single deckers to extremes, but have decided to cut back when it comes to the double deckers - for two treasons. 1. It would be VERY difficult (if not impossible) and VERY time consuming to fit lights to both top and bottom decks of the coach. 2. With the smaller windows you wouldn't see much anyway (with or without lights) But I have spent some time experimenting and I do think that painting the tables white and the floor black does give hints to the viewer that ther is an interior in the left hand coach. 2 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
HonestTom Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 I paint the coach interiors and add passengers. I did for a while go the whole hog - using high quality figures, adding things like mirrors and adverts inside the carriage as appropriate, but I realised that these were completely invisible when the coaches were running. But I do think painting the interiors gives the coach "depth" at normal viewing distance and greatly improves the appearance of even older, cheaper coaches. I find passengers are visible, but sharp detail isn't. I tend to model urban environments, so an empty passenger train would be a worrying sign for the railway. As others have, I buy those bulk packs of Chinese-made HO figures. They tend to come in fairly psychedelic colour schemes, so I do give them a basic repaint to at least make it look like they're ordinary people in the 50s and 60s, plus a quick dark wash to bring out what little relief there is. I put them in the window seats because that's where they'll be visible at normal viewing distance. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TEAMYAKIMA Posted January 28, 2021 Author Share Posted January 28, 2021 On the subject of cheap unpainted figures ............ I also bought several packets of them direct from China unpainted but the exact packs I bought seem no longer available. KYTES LIGHTS sell them painted, but not unpainted. Does anyone her in the UK sell this exact set unpainted? A few years back they were available from several HK suppliers but now nobody. Yes there are other packs but not these figures. 1 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
InterCitySpud Posted January 28, 2021 Share Posted January 28, 2021 2 hours ago, TEAMYAKIMA said: Not much social distancing here. Better paint some masks on quick! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Vecchio Posted January 28, 2021 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 28, 2021 2 hours ago, InterCitySpud said: Not much social distancing here. Better paint some masks on quick! They are all from Wuhan and had it already a year ago.... 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now