It seems like a lot of people ignore figures. They don’t seem to be as easy to find as they were even three years ago, and it seems like pretty much everyone has the same generic-looking figures. While the premium-brand figures, Artistta and Preiser, are well done, they’re pretty generic.

I used to use Homies, a brand of 1.75-inch vinyl figure, on my layout. Their Palermos line worked especially well on a vintage-looking layout. While they were slightly oversize, they looked the part, they were cheap, and I could buy them at Dollar Tree and Kmart.

I’ve turned to using 28mm figures intended for wargaming. They scale out to about 1:60, and “pulp”-style figures look good in many 20th century settings, particularly a prewar setting. Some lines to look at include Steve Barber, Mark Copplestone, and Bob Murch. If you prefer 1:43 figures, take a look at A C Stadden. While these figures are costly (around $4-$5 each before shipping) and you have to paint them yourself, each individual figure truly is a work of art. Get a few of these figures, supplement them with the figures everyone else uses, and you’ll have figures that don’t look like the figures on every single layout you see in every issue of Classic Toy Trains and O Gauge Railroading month after month.

I figure with all the money I didn’t spend on scenery or buildings, I can afford to splurge a bit on a few figures. For some reason I’m more willing to pay $10 for a freight car than $6 for a figure, but that freight car will spend as much time on the shelf as it does on the layout. The figure will be on the layout all the time.

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