The Cibola Lumber & Mining company

Getting figures that are the correct scale or that fit the available space is never easy. This is made worse by manufacturers of passenger cars claiming their products to be of a certain scale or ambiguously listing them as “G” scale. Couple this with the loosely described passenger figures that are up for sale and it is a bag of cats to get items that match.

What follows is some examples and modeling suggestions for 1/24th – 1/20.3 scale. As always I own or have access to the actual items for direct comparison.

Here is what I have found for sitting passengers to fit the Accucraft, Bachmann and LGB, Jackson Sharp coach seats.

These cars are advertised as:

Accucraft AMS: 1/20.3 ( I feel this is a correct claim)

Bachmann and LGB: 1/22.5 (actually 1/24th with some selective compression)

The cheapest figures I can find are the DIY/architectural figures (actually slot-car audience figures from the 1970s) sold as either 1/24th or 1/25th. They can be had as standing, sitting or a mixture of both. These are also sold in 1/30 scale but I am not including those as they are entirely too small for the scale listed here.

You can get these as both painted or unpainted lots ranging in price from $ .10 to $ 1.00 each. It pays to shop around as they can be had in lots at bargain prices. Most of these are sold from China or Hong Kong. Don’t fear the shipping. It is usually free or very low and I have never had trouble with overseas sellers.

Below you can see the seated figures next to 1/24th Greenman on the left and 1/20.3 Greenman on the right.

Accucraft coach seat: Figures are way to small. When installed in the coach their heads are barely visible at the bottom of the window.

 

Bachmann / LGB Seat: Here they are pretty good fit. Acceptably visible through the windows. It is necessary to cut the front of the feet off (some have to be cut at the thigh) for them to drop into the seat bottom. This is not a problem as the missing parts are not easy to see once installed.

For continuity here is how they fit the benches sold by Just Plain Folks. Not terrible but they do look small. Notice the feet do not reach the ground and the shoulders are barely even with the top of the back rest. A better would fit would have the figure largest enough to rest their arm along the top of the support.

 

The next best choice is Railroad Avenue and Scale Humans:

Both are advertised as 1/20.3 and both have some variation with in the model range.

Here are some examples on the Accucraft seats. Pretty good fit. The RR Ave guys take up the whole bench and will have to sit alone. The Scale Human figures multi part kits will fit two to a bench. Some of the earlier single pour figures will only sit alone.

Here are both lines on the Bachmann / LGB bench. No way they fit. The head are above the windows and the figures would have to be cut off at the waist. At $12. – $20. each that is a huge waste of money. Keep in mind Bachmann regularly tries to claim their coach as 1/20.3.

Also in 1/20.3 are figure from Cheaple. They fit the Accucraft seats because that is how I made them. There are both single and two per seat figures. I only sell left overs. They are sold unpainted for $5 – $10 each. These can be found on E-bay under the seller name “Boomersjoes”. If there are none listed then that means I have none available at the time.

Of course they don’t come close to fitting the Bachmann / LGB seats.

 

Once again for continuity here are examples of all the 1/20.3 figures on the bench.

 

You get the idea. I am not going to post anymore examples on this subject but I did measure all of the seats. You can use these pictures to at least make a best guess on any figures you have.

Accucraft:

 

Bachmann:

 

Just Plain Folks:

 

Good luck everyone. Hope this helps.