Biplane Pilot

After our recent visit to the annual train show in Springfield, I thought it would be a cool idea to add an airplane to our backyard garden railroad.  I figured it would look good swooping down right over the tallest of plants.  

I haven't fully worked out how I'm going to do this but my first thought was to have a long, tall wood stake hidden in the plants.  I'm thinking that the top 12 inches or so could be clear acrylic.  Then the acrylic could be somehow inserted into the bottom of the plane.  I know I'll come up with some way to mount this plane over the plants but, at the moment, I'm not completely certain. 

My timeframe for this railroad is the early 20th century so I decided that a biplane would be ideal.  Finding a biplane in the right scale turned out to be fairly easy (I found one at Wayfair).  Once I had the biplane, I realized that, since it has an open cockpit, I should also find a pilot to purchase.

I found a pilot figure on eBay but it was an unpainted 3D figure printed on a 3D printer.  I would need to paint this guy but he is definitely the right size and from the correct timeframe...

So this morning, I pulled out my craft paints and a couple of small paint brushes...  and started painting...

This little pilot is now looking pretty good!  I have some touch-ups to do but I think this turned out quite well.

I also need to make a seat of some sort that fits in the biplane.  I already made one out of wood but it is too small and it doesn't fit well in the biplane.  I need to make it larger and I need to shape the bottom of it to fit perfectly inside the fuselage of the biplane.  It should be a fairly easy project but will require a lot of cutting, test fitting and filing, however, having already built a seat that is far too small, I now have a better idea of where to start on this second version.