Shay2, Cheer up man, it's not that tough!
The brush you need is a 0-0 "spotter". Some sort of magnifyer is nice to have, & to hold the figure while I paint it, I glue the bottom of one foot (the figure's foot, not mine
) to a piece of wire with a tiny drop of CA adhesive.
I always start by priming the figures with gray primer from a spray can. Then it's all Polly Scale acrylics. For skin color, I use Sand for the lightest shade, & Roof Brown for the darkest, & any mixture of these two, depending on the "diversity" of your population. As far as clothing goes, that's up to you, keeping in mind that turn of the century workers probably weren't a very colorful lot. Grays, browns, blacks, whites, & maybe some blue denim thrown in. After everybody's dry, a thin black wash will "dirty them down" nicely. Don't worry about tiny features like eyes & mouths, they're really too small to show in a scale this small.
After trying this, you'll never go back to those expensive pre-painted jobs. The unpainted ones cost around $20 or so for 120 figures. For the same price, yuou can get 5 or 6 painted ones.