Policemen - HO Scale

Patrolmen on the beat

The group catches American street police on a perfectly ordinary day. Five men are joined by a four-legged colleague, and none of the figures is doing anything heroic.

What each figure is doing

One of the patrolmen is treating himself to a doughnut. A second is writing out a ticket. A third has his hand at his holster, as if about to draw. A fourth is directing traffic at an intersection and a fifth is walking his beat, tapping his nightstick into his palm, a gesture as inseparable from the American street as a traffic light or a fire escape.

Where to put the group

The figures are made to a ratio of 1:87, that is in HO scale, the most widespread one in model railroading. An adult man therefore comes out at roughly two centimeters. On a layout the group suits a station concourse, a shopping street or exactly that intersection, where it gives the scene a story that reads clearly: the policeman at the crossing explains why the vehicles are standing still, and his colleague with the pad explains why a tow truck is waiting at the curb.

A small tip on setting them down

Before you reach for the glue, set all six out dry and turn the figures so that they look at each other or at the same thing. The direction of the gaze holds a scene together far more strongly than the number of figures; a group in which everyone looks somewhere else reads as randomly scattered even when the individual poses are excellent.

What the group reveals about the period

A uniform with a nightstick and no visible radio sets the scene rather in the earlier decades, when a patrolman on the beat relied on a whistle and on the nearest telephone booth. The surroundings can be matched to that: a street clock, a newspaper stand, parked cars with rounded shapes. The set thus indirectly determines what the whole street around it should look like.