Model railway animals by Noch

The other day I happened to notice a little pack of horses made to go with model railway layouts - there's quite a lot of these from different manufacturers, because making miniature countryside for the trains to travel through is a big part of that hobby, but while most of the companies manage little blobs looking roughly like the intended species (from a distance, if you squint, and maybe have never seen a real cow before ), these ones by Noch actually did look pretty accurate!
And so, because tiny things amuse me, and I was up for a painting challenge, I decided to get one of the multi packs - they do some with riders or handlers, some mixed with other farm animals, but I went for the little box of horses with the most different poses/breeds included.

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Here they are in the box, carefully padded with foam to stop them getting all jumbled up. You can see the item number on the packaging, here they are on the company's own site - use the 'Animals' category there if you'd like to browse what else they make, sadly it all seems farm related with no wildlife apart from deer, so there can't be enough demand in the railway world for making a model train pass a zoo

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And here they are with a tape measure for scale - because horse breeds vary so much there isn't much point me measuring one horse as a size example, they're all different, but hopefully this should be handy for anyone wanting to imagine their size, and for TAW as I don't have the traditional Lego brick [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

And finally, here's all the horses singly - they do look a bit blobby and blunt compared to the new wave of micro mini computer-designed and 3D-printed tiny little horses, but for such a small scale sculpted by hand the old fashioned way, even reaching this level of accuracy is impressive!

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No breeds are allocated for them, there's no extra info on the packaging apart from the word 'Horses' in several languages, so anything I guessed at here would be purely speculation and no use for categorising them on TAW. I just like that they've included a nice mixture of types, from ponies to drafts, brood mares to action poses - they'd make a nice realistic cross section of the equine world when displayed in their intended railway habitat. And they'll be fun for me as an outsider to that hobby, too, cos I'm going to give them more realistic paintwork so each one can have a unique new character (and I'll have to make some extra small scenery to photograph them with when they're done, too!)

Does anyone else have railway animals in their collection? Have you ever managed to find more varied species? Or are any of you balanced between two hobbies, and do railways as well as animal figures?

I'm not going to carry on hunting them down, one boxful this tiny is enough for me, but it'd be interesting to know more, and see what people think of this railway hobby, which is a bit similar to ours as it involves striving for realism in miniature, but on very different subject with only this one little overlap where animals are concerned.

Beautiful detail for such tiny horses, I can't wait to see how you paint them! I think there are some incredible models in the model railway hobby, the dogs are even smaller and I have a small selection of them too- I am impressed that these figures can stand freely most of the time! And I am really impressed by the quality of these horses!

There are any interesting animal figures by this kind of stuff

Bonnie wrote:

I am impressed that these figures can stand freely most of the time!

Most of these do, but a couple don't - you can tell I had to prop them up against the background here The white mare in the first photo probably will stand if I tweak her legs (or file a little off the bottom of whichever foot is tipping her over), but the black trotting horse in the second photo definitely won't, he's only got two feet on the ground by design. If he was going to live in a model railway field, he could be glued down, but I'll need to be creative and figure out some other way to balance him upright when I take the proper photos later - maybe he can be trotting past a convenient tree!

They are just gorgeous !!! Look at the one chasing insects with her tail

And the ponies ! The trotting black horse, and...they are so tiny and neat

Thankyou for the lovely pictures and for the comparison to the tape measure for scale. It helps a lot

I think the tail-swishing one of my favourite, love the little rested hind foot where she's trying to nap quietly and keeping the flies off.

The tail-swisher is my favorite as well, and the little standing pony, and the foal with the turned head. All of them are nice, with lots of potential to really come alive with a good paint job.

Wow, great collection of horses! So tiny!!

Thanks George for opening this topic. I don't think I'll have energy to introduce them on TAW soon, if any other editor could do it I'd be happy. Nevertheless, as long as they are here, it won't be difficult to find the topic. Those horses will need to be called by pose, color and type... I don't know.
They're H0 scale. 1:87, really tiny figures. It is interesting that H0 is half 0 scale. 0 scale was 1:43,5 that was the old popular scale for railways, probably the one who turned 1:43 scale cars very popular too. For a long time, H0 turned to be the most popular railway scale, I remember seeing a few antelopes at that scale and I didn't buy them because they were tiny.

We could just start with f.eins "Norch H0 15761 box with 9 different horse" as a link to these nice pictures. Then there is SOMETHING on the Norch-page ?
Or is that confusing ?

Yeah, I'm with Suzanne - listed as a set with the item number and pictures would be helpful enough for anyone wanting to look up what they'd got.With HO scale explained as 1:87 to put it into terms animal toy collectors are more familiar with, and my photo with the tape measure to help illustrate the size. I don't really think they need mould descriptions or guessed breeds allocating, as they're only sold as a set and in these colours - it's not the sort of company which will issue more of them regularly with extra breeds or redesigned paintwork, like animal figures as we know them.