Train Personnel - HO Scale

Duty on the platform and the order to board

A station building says nothing on its own. Only the staff on the platform turn it into a place in operation. This set supplies the crew across the whole range: three porters labor with luggage, a fourth stands empty-handed and waits for work, a trainman watches a pocket watch and the conductor has his mouth open, as if he were giving the order to board at this very moment.

The most valuable thing about the set is that look at the watch. A pocket watch was a working tool on the railroad, not an ornament: departures were run by it and its accuracy was checked regularly. A figure looking into one therefore gives away both the period and the trade at once, without needing a caption for it. The porter leaning under the weight of a suitcase speaks in the same way.

The arrangement suggests itself. The porters belong at a car or at a heap of luggage by the wall of the building, the waiting porter at the entrance to the concourse, the trainman at the door of a car and the conductor in the middle of the platform, where he can be heard. The set therefore creates not just a group of figures but a scene with action, in which it is clear what is going to follow in a moment.

The figures are reduced to a ratio of 1:87 and are supplied painted. The uniforms are set in dark tones, so they stand out on the light concrete of a platform and, conversely, merge with dark asphalt. Anyone building a station with a covered platform does well to place them at the edge of the roof, where the light falls. The direction of each figure's gaze is also worth attention. The crew do not look at each other but at the train, at the clock and at the passengers, so the way the figures are turned gives away the moment in which the scene is frozen. It works most strongly at the moment just before departure, when a porter is still running and the trainman is already raising his hand.