Professionals - HO Scale

The people in suits and skirt suits who turn a building into an office

A business district is known by who moves about in it. Until somebody stands in front of a bank or an office, it is only a facade with windows. This set supplies exactly the type of figure such a building lacks: three men and three women in the kind of clothing worn to work, caught at a moment of waiting. They hold themselves upright, with their hands at their sides or holding a bag, and read as restrained rather than hurried.

The uses on offer are wider than the name would suggest. The figures suit the entrance of an office building, the railing of a platform, a station concourse and the front of a hotel. Anyone building a city scene from the middle of the last century will appreciate that the cut of the clothing is not markedly contemporary and does not tie the scene to a particular year. In a rural scene, on the other hand, six figures dressed like this would look out of place; there working figures suit better.

A reduction of 1:87 means that a figure one hundred and eighty centimeters tall comes out at a little over two centimeters. At that size a face can no longer be made out, but the color contrast between a dark suit and a light shirt is clearly visible. It is exactly this contrast that does all the work and is the reason why it pays to place the figures where the light falls.

Before gluing them down, try setting the figures out loosely and look at the scene from the eye height of a visitor. A group standing in an exact row gives its artificiality away at once. It is enough to loosen it up, turn one figure with its back to the viewer and make the gaps between them uneven.