Outdoor Dining - HO Scale

Dinner outdoors at the close of summer

Eating outdoors means a great deal more than just carrying a plate from the table out onto the terrace. Once it begins to get dark the conversation slows down, nobody is in a hurry anywhere and the company at the table stays long after it has finished eating. It is exactly this mood that the scene catches: good food under an open sky and the friendly talk that ends a successful summer day. On a layout a scene like this is valuable precisely because it is static. Beside a moving train it works as a counterweight that calms the eye.

Where the scene belongs

It comes into its own most easily in the garden of a family house, on the terrace of an inn or in the yard of a wine bar on a main street. It also looks good in the courtyard of a station restaurant, where the guests watch the switching. The figures are painted at the factory, so the scene is built by setting them in place rather than with a brush. A ratio of 1:87 is at the same time the most widespread scale of railroad layouts, thanks to which the set matches buildings and vehicles from dozens of different makers.

The details that pull the scene together

The difference between a group of figures and a real scene is made by what is around them. Plates and glasses can be suggested with a drop of gloss varnish, a tablecloth with a piece of thin paper soaked in thinned glue. Light is then the last step: a warm diode hidden under a canopy or in a lamp above the table turns the same group into an evening scene. Anyone building a module with a daytime scene can add the shade of a parasol instead of light, which takes over the same role. Dishes set down at the edge of a railing add another moment of action to the scene.