I would like to encourage Bachmann to offer a set of seated engineers. Our locomotives need someone in the cab. Kato had a great set but now it seems to just be Woodland scenics. The Woodland Scenics engineer set is a mixture of seated and standing; with the standing figures mostly useless for "in the cab" use, the price is not good value for part of the product I will not use. Other than Seated or standing passengers, this would benefit model railroaders more than many of the other sets, ie. policemen, people walking dogs, lovers....ect.
Spectrum locomotives used to include the Cab crew. No longer, victims of the economizing in the sound value era.
But, about scale figure figures. I don't like them unless they are seated or standing still. I read a long time ago that figures frozen in motion are distracting, passive figures being better to the scenes.
There are a number of "civilian" seated figures that can be repainted for use as engineers. It's also possible to use a heat gun, for heat shrink tubing, to soften a standing figure enough to bend 90 degrees at the waist. You can try bending again at the knees, but I usually just clip the legs at the knees, since they generally are not visible anyway.
Len
If we were in a meeting, I would second that notion. I too, would love to have a figure in the locomotive cab. Basically, I'm getting of tired seeing my locomotives running around without an engineer/conductor, cause it looks like the moving locomotive is a "runaway". ;D
By the way, I'll look into the idea of heat to bend some figures.