Main characters on your layout......


Old 97

Old 97

Hogger
Do you folks have any main characters to populate your layout and tell a story? I have a few and they frequently move about the railroad doing different things and getting into mischief from time to time. They have their own vehicles, friends and business/jobs. They've even been known to meet at the local coffee house. When someone asks what's new on the layout, I'm apt to tell them something my characters did. :p
 
pics, and no, but would cars count as "characters"?? if so then I guess we could say the same for my layout, which if I ever get a bigger place are getting a proper layout to live on :D
 
Well, at the club, we have Clarence. He's a guy with a red shirt and jeans. He's a bit big for an HO Scale guy, but he can often be seen joyriding on trains :D
 
I think it's important for there to be stories on our layouts, beyond the obvious trains moving goods and materials back and forth across the plywood.

Careful you're not just 'playing dolls', though. That's what girls do, yuck! ;D
 
I want to get a set of duplicate figures, like the "Mexican" twins John Allen had, the Sorfeetz brothers, and set them up just like he did. Hanging a diesel salesman off of a trestle in Gorre!
 
I have one. It's the bearded shirtless guy from some HO scale figure hippy set that I bought at the LHS back around 1970. He and a lone AHM 40' Santa Fe boxcar (15231) were the only survivors from my childhood layout that was given away when I left for the Army in 1977. I found them in the bottom of one of my dads old footlockers when mom sold off the house after his passing in '98. I just didn't have the heart to throw them away so I stuck them in a box of junk that has made a dozen apartment moves over the years until finally landing in my garages attic, hopefully for good.

Now after 35 years the boxcar weathered only by time is proudly sitting on the rails of my new layout, and be sure that the bearded hippy guy will once again be spreading sedition on the street corner of my new town (once I get it built).
 
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I've been wanting to assemble an excursion train, complete with open air gondola with picnic tables concreted into the floor and a bunch of tourists with cameras taking pictures of the scenery as it passes by. I even have dreams of including little LED flashes in there so it looks like they are using flash cameras.
 
Our clubs layout has a ton of "story scenes". My favorite is the diver just as he leaps off of our big wooden trestle into the river. We have a car accident in the town, complete with first responders. There are a few loggers cutting down pine trees on the mountain. We have deer all over in the hilly areas. Bill's house is there too, right between the two mainlines in a truck-less boxcar in the middle of nowhere. We even have a switchman figure at the mainline access to our hidden staging.
 
LoudMusic said:
I've been wanting to assemble an excursion train...
Click to expand...

Many moons ago, I was invited to run trains at a club and asked if I could bring along some friends.
Permission was granted and I promptly glued three of my favorite charactors to the platform of a caboose that met club standards and they traveled the entire layout! :p :p
 
Old 97 said:
I ain't playing no dolls! :p I've often told my family and friends that if it happens on the layout, it's real. :D
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It IS real. It's just reeaaal small :D

Many moons ago, I was invited to run trains at a club and asked if I could bring along some friends.
Permission was granted and I promptly glued three of my favorite charactors to the platform of a caboose that met club standards and they traveled the entire layout!
Click to expand...

Eeeexxcccccelllennnnnnnt.

I've been too lazy to get my 'fleet' out of storage and up to club standards. I'd also want to have really good records of what I take up there, beyond the club's book, as there are literally thousands of cars on that layout. But you've inspired me with the notion of sticking lots of little people on them. It would be more to look at than a string of brown box cars.
 
If you're getting the "mooners" then you should get the "lady flashing" to make things really interesting!

When my daughter was about 3 or 4 I glued a figure on the back of a caboose and she would wave every time it would go by. Those were good days.
 
Okay, I'll 'fess up.

1. I've got a control tower at a busy rail intersection, and the operator has been standing out on one of the exterior stair's platforms for two years watching trains go by. The railroad can't fire him and escort him off the property because he is literally glued in place! :)

2. For about a year there's been a fellow sitting on the station platform watching trains - never eats, goes home, or to the potty.

3. I've got one of those Bachmann yellow (supposedly operating) motor cars with four men in it, connected to two pull-behind trailers with tools and a winch on them, that's been sitting on the track in the same location for over a year. They are trying to get across two double main lines at the back of the yard but traffic has been too busy with heavy volume and long trains, so they can't ever get some track-and-time from the dispatcher to cross the mains and get to their shed. I tell folks that the railroad pays a local restuarant to daily deliver food to them.

I didn't set this motor car outfit where it is for the story, but because it just looks attractive at that location - fits in well. The story is a "plus."

DougC
 
diburning said:
Well, at the club, we have Clarence. He's a guy with a red shirt and jeans. He's a bit big for an HO Scale guy, but he can often be seen joyriding on trains :D
Click to expand...

My four year old daughter does this with our HO guys/gals. She'll wait till a train passes and place a figure on top to see if it'll make it around the big loop. She talks to them, makes them talk to each other, fall off, crash, whatever. She derailed one train due to a "missed jump" by the figure in question. I was working on a building and hear the familiar clackclackclackclack of off-rail train wheels. By the time I had the train stopped, I had lost four of the six cars. Asking her what happened, she simply picked up a car, grabbed her person and said "It's ok, he's not hurt". Of course he isnt :rolleyes: Good thing I built my layout with kids in mind ;)
 
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