Whatever else you might say about the Atlantic Far-West Story range, it is certainly wide-ranging. The real or imagined prospect of gold was a major force in driving the settlers of European origin further and further West in 19th Century America. This set depicts the miners and prospectors that were often at the forefront of that movement.
Though only containing eight poses, Atlantic has included many aspects of the Gold Rush with some very nice figures. There are men either panning for gold or digging for it. One man is fully laden with all the tools he needs to begin his search, and another has two (very small) donkeys to carry his burden, or perhaps his haul. The man dragging a cart full of earth may well be part of one of the much bigger operations that became established once the easily accessible gold had all been collected. Finally there is a man weighing the gold and perhaps buying it from the miners.
As with the rest of the range, the figures are small, as they are HO scale, and look emaciated. Another Atlantic feature is that all the men are 'looking to camera' rather than at what they are doing, so although the poses are generally pretty good, they look more like they are posing for a photograph than actually working. Costume, which of course is civilian clothes, is all reasonable, though Atlantic seen to think that all civilians wore neck ties despite their being very rare on photographs of the real men. Also all the figures have been moulded with guns and/or knives about their person, but actual images from the time show that the men did not wear these while working as they would have been a hindrance, though doubtless they were kept nearby in case of trouble. Yet another trademark fault is the mould mark, which is evident on most of these figures and is an ugly feature that is difficult to remedy.
This set suffers from the failings common to all sets in this range, but is nonetheless of an interesting subject and is not without charm.