Tourists - HO Scale

The visitors who came to look

A tourist differs from a local in posture. He is not in a hurry, he stops, he turns his head upward and looks where a city dweller would not even blink. It is exactly this difference that is visible on the figures and exactly why it changes the meaning of a scene: a station with four sightseers stops being a transport hub and becomes a destination. The set holds men as well as women in the relaxed dress worn on a trip.

There are more places on offer than one would expect. The figures belong at a viewpoint, in front of the entrance to a castle or a museum, on a square by a fountain or beside a bus that has just brought a tour. They also work well on a platform, where a sightseer can be told from a commuter at once by the fact that he is not looking at the clock. Anyone building a mountain line can put them at the railing above a valley.

A reduction of 1:87 is favorable for this kind of scene. The figures are large enough for the position and the gesture to be read from them, but at the same time so small that they do not overwhelm the surrounding buildings. The colors are applied at the factory, so the scene also gains a color accent that breaks it up, if it is otherwise set in grays and greens.

When setting them down, think about where the figures are looking. A group turned toward an empty wall looks senseless; the same group turned toward a lookout tower or a train gives the scene a story. It is good to make the gaps between them irregular and to move one of the figures aside, as if it had fallen behind. A last recommendation concerns the base: a sightseer standing straight on a smooth board always looks stuck on. It therefore pays to sink the feet gently into a layer of ballast or into dried PVA glue, so that the figure stands in the terrain rather than on it.