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Whether you're a scale or traditional 0-27 passenger car enthusiast, generally how many passengers do you put in your cars? What percentage of your cars' seats are occupied?

It seems those manufacturers who sell their cars populated with passengers generally include about 12 figures, which is much fewer than the number of riders the prototypes of those cars generally have occupying their seats.

So if you're a stickler for authenticity towards the outward appearance of your cars, does your desire "to get it right" extend inside your passenger cars with the number of people you have riding in them? If not, why not? Share your thoughts with us. Photos are welcomed and encouraged! 

 

Last edited by ogaugeguy
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Hi OGauge,

For me it depends on the exact car.  I put more people in the rear observation cars on the sofa and chairs, dining cars, bar/lounges cars and upper domes areas.  Less people go in the Pullman sleeping cars.  My reasoning is most people don't want to spend a cross country trip in a little roomette or cramped open section seat staring at a total stranger.  So, I make sure my people are out of the sleeping cars, moving around and doing things on the train. 

Dome seating

7000 Dome seating before and after - Copy

Main dining area

8003 Dining area before-after

Sleeping car with roomettes and bedrooms

Before and after Western Star 2

Bar/Lounge

bar 2

I don't know the percentage, but I always leave some empty seats in the busy sections.

 

Attachments

Images (4)
  • 7000 Dome seating before and after - Copy
  • 8003 Dining area before-after
  • Before and after Western Star 2
  • bar 2
Last edited by T.Albers
Pingman posted:

T.Albers, you did a great job redoing those interiors and populating the cars.

How did you get the little people out of their original seats?  

Hi Pingman, K-Line passengers are held in by a spot of hot glue.  Just grab the passengers body and twist.  K-Line cars that are sold online are infamous these days for a having a sales disclaimer for the floating (loose) passengers inside. 

The hardest part is trying to get the old hot glue residue off the seats and the passengers bottoms.  If you are lucky the old glue is hardened and you can pick it off in chunks.  But sometimes the glue is breaking down into its raw components and needs to be removed with paint thinner.   

 

ogaugeguy posted:

Whether you're a scale or traditional 0-27 passenger car enthusiast, generally how many passengers do you put in your cars? What percentage of your cars' seats are occupied?

It seems those manufacturers who sell their cars populated with passengers generally include about 12 figures, which is much fewer than the number of riders the prototypes of those cars generally have occupying their seats.

So if you're a stickler for authenticity towards the outward appearance of your cars, does your desire "to get it right" extend inside your passenger cars with the number of people you have riding in them? If not, why not? Share your thoughts with us. Photos are welcomed and encouraged! 

 

They represent passenger patronage before the coming of AMTRAK.

I answered the same question over on another forum but will add something here because of the different responses/perspectives.

I primarily model scale passenger cars i.e. 21" versions or GGD cars, which are slightly shorter, as are the Lionel Superliners. With a standard set of 6 - 8 cars, you could spend a lot of time and $ in fully populating a complete train. My sets are primarily from the streamliner era when you could expect a fairly full train.

However, you are constrained in numbers partly because of the lack of availability and variety in passenger figures that readily fit in O scale interiors, which are actually sub-scale and closer to S scale than true O. MTH Railking figures and the old K-Line figures (some of which are now issued by Lionel) are the best if you don't want to have to perform radical plastic surgery on the figures. 

Partly as a result of that, I have only fully populated certain special feature cars on which I am making a lot of modifications anyway. Most recently, I have worked on the UP dome lounge observation car that is part of the Excursion Train set. Spoiler Alert - my interiors are basically fantasy schemes with only some fidelity to the prototypes, as in a nod in the direction of nostalgia. To compare  T. Albers' fine K-Line dome car with what I have done, here is the dome section:

3_Overhead6_Dome_L+R_Lit

I had to add both ceiling and floor lighting to the dome because the Lionel cars come without any. All the table accessories are "quarter scale" 3D printed items of which there is a vast amount for diorama or dollhouse creators.

The Excursion car domes are prototypical with very large curved glass panels. This makes life a lot easier than older domes because of extra headroom. In contrast to the above, in an earlier 21" Lionel dome car with a conventional framed glass roof I put in fewer people both in the dome and below and again added lighting. Bear in mind that these Lionel cars come without any passengers:

IMG_7939

The area of this car that is under the dome is a lounge. I did not modify the seating and only put a couple of passengers in, who are placed squarely in the side windows. Putting in more passengers was surplus to requirements because they would not be seen through the windows on either side of the car. Otherwise, as this is an MKT Texas Special car, I added a totally whimsical "we're not in Kansas any more" theme, based loosely on the fact that poster art was a feature of most long-distance streamliners of the era:

IMG_7936

But this is not what I consider a feature car; reverting to the UP dome lounge observation car, which is, I went overboard in populating the observation compartment, mostly with excursion passengers who are on a party/picnic outing:

4_Port_Starboard5_Boozers

To do what I considered justice to the prototypical features of this compartment, which include the curved seating and the several wood coffee stands, I had to rummage through several different sets of passenger figures. A few are S scale Artistta figures, which are made out of metal. I pretty much exhausted the entire range of "personalities" that are available in this one section.

However, this is not my most populated feature car. That possibly dubious honor goes to a Lionel 21" aluminum dining car, the Sam Houston from Lionel's Texas Special set. Here I modified the dining compartment from the original and prototypical 36 seater to 30 and put in over 30 diners, drinkers and stewards with the idea of having one of them visible in every window:

Diner_Panorama copyIMG_7550

My favorite vignette of anything I have built to date is in another car of this train and was created by accident when a female passenger fell over in the course of being glued upright. I decided that she could stay tipped over as well as tipsy:

VeraB1

All this is a long way from the idealized passengers of railroad advertising of the time, which is illustrated by this poster for the GM Train of Tomorrow:

GM_ToT

But a certain amount of artistic license was permissible then and I have followed suit. 

Attachments

Images (10)
  • 3_Overhead
  • 6_Dome_L+R_Lit
  • IMG_7939
  • IMG_7936
  • 4_Port_Starboard
  • 5_Boozers
  • Diner_Panorama copy
  • IMG_7550
  • VeraB1
  • GM_ToT
Last edited by Hancock52
Pingman posted:

Thanks for the explanation, descriptions, and photos of your process Hancock52.  Passenger car interiors are truly a subset of O scale modeling in its own right as you, T. Albers, and the tireless John Rowlen, among others, show us.

I think it’s a relatively small subset, although over the years on this forum there have been several fairly ambitious passenger car projects done in 3rail cars.

Eliminating passenger figures from scale cars probably saved Lionel some $ in manufacturing costs but if they thought a lot of people would buy their (re-issued old K-Line) figures I think that was probably wrong. I see that more recent cars are again being cataloged with figures in them but I’m not sure that extends to 21” cars. 

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