Sitting & Waiting - HO Scale

The sitting figures that layouts are short of

Everybody has standing and walking figures; sitting ones tend to be scarce. And yet it is precisely they that can calm a busy platform down and give it the pace of real traffic.

Who is sitting here

A mother with a child is waiting, probably for a bus, and not far from them a dog sits. A woman and a man are deep in conversation. The last pair sit close beside each other and are plainly content just to be together. Altogether these are two men, three women, one child and one animal.

It will not work without a bench

The supports are not in the package and have to be provided at the same time as the figures. It is not only a matter of looks: a sitting figure has its thighs shaped at a right angle and without a seat it cannot be stood up at all. The height of the seat should come out at roughly five millimeters in a ratio of 1:87, which matches an ordinary bench.

Placing them

The group looks most natural when it is divided between two or three benches with gaps. People who do not know each other never sit next to each other unless they have to. Leave one bench only half occupied and another full, and the platform stops looking arranged at once.

The view from outside

Unlike standing figures, sitting ones look horizontally, and so what matters is what they have in front of them. Place the support so that those waiting look at the track, at the roadway or at each other; a bench turned to face a wall looks odd immediately, even when a viewer cannot explain why.

A small thing that helps the scene

A piece of luggage set down, a bag propped against a leg or a newspaper on the seat gives away how long the figures have been waiting. Such a detail costs a few minutes of work and yet turns an ordinary group into a finished set piece.