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I have four Bachmann On30 4-6-0s that I want to put at least engineers at the throttles, the firemen can be at the coal bunker on the tender if need be.
What commerical crew figures will fit inside the cab of one of these? I have a set of Woodland Scenics crew figures, but none will fit through the cab windows or are thin enough to fit between the cab wall and the firebox without a lot of cutting down.
I'd rather have figures which can be slid through those small cab windows.
Has anyone managed to find figures which will fit?

Removing the cab is a moot point in regard to the figure fitting inside as there's almost no room at all for a figure to fit all the way down to the cab floor.
I've seen the prototype for the Bachmann 4-6-0, former ET&WNC # 12 at Tweetsie RR in Blowing Rock, NC. Those cabs were ridiculously tight and crews there would rather run their former White Pass 2-8-0 as that cab is pretty comfortable. The Baldwin ten-wheelers had cabs astride the firebox, not behind it. The engineers must have roasted in the summer time while running them.
I've seen lots of photos of the ET&WNC engineers and they were all very small men, at least the ones who ran those ten wheelers.
I cut down some of the woodland scenics figures, ridiculously so (one is just a 'pie shaped' wedge of the figure itself, all were cut off at the waist or much higher).

Four fit in the cabs, the other two won't at all as they have outstretched hands on each direction. I will either:
-Do arm surgery on them
-Sell them or use them elsewhere on the layout
-Buy some artistta ones, if I can find the right ones (they'll need to be badly cut down even then).

 

To get an idea of how tight those cabs really were, here's ET&WNC # 10 (going through a rebuild at the Northern Pacific South Tacoma shops in 1943 after a year on the White Pass & Yukon), showing very well the firebox and the back of the cab, showing the unusual placement of the cab on the backhead. When 10 and 14 (a twin Baldwin) returned to Alaska, they had cabs which were much further back.
Anyway, this is what the Bachmann On30 ten-wheeler's backhead looks like:

 

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Originally Posted by rex desilets:

I've seen lots of photos of the ET&WNC engineers and they were all very small men, at least the ones who ran those ten wheelers.

How small? Small enough that 1:64 figures would work?

http://sceneryunlimited.net/arttista.php

I expect you'll have to resign yourself to some surgery, e.g. 1/48 heads on 1/64 bodies..


They weren't that small. Even 1/48 figures look odd up next to these engines as I thought of converting over some US GIs or Germans into engineers and the size of those Tamayia 1/48 figs looked awfully small.

Arttista makes a couple of engineer figures that are thin and standing, but they're awfully hard to get online, I've found.

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