The Little World

The Polish TKS tankette is ready to join the roster in the Armour Museum. Now all we need is an armour museum

Well, it’s coming. The Ess Bend Engineering workshop is proceeding well, and as soon as that is done more tanks and vehicles will be pouring out of it, and they have to pour somewhere. It’s no good taking it down to the Scale Model Club rooms in Noranda as we already have more tanks than the Russian army, and ours have turrets on them. So after the workshop will come the exhibition hall…or an old iron shed.

The IBG model of the tankette is quite the best one I’ve had to work on. As an inveterate 1:72 aircraft modeller, it is quite a leap of procedure to go larger and more detailed – as well as encountering the more angular shapes of the AFV. I am going to search for an aircraft model from this firm to see if the standards of design and moulding are just as good.

There were problems, of course, but all caused by my misreading the illustrated instructions. All were rectified. There has been a part go missing, but as it is an external store that might well be missing on an museum example, it is perfectly acceptable.

The brush painting was a novelty, and quite appropriate for this model. The Hataka paints flow well, dry flat, and clean up with water. I doubt we’ll see many more of them here in Australia, but as I have most of the bottles left after this tiny tank, I’ll get to use them for other projects. The brush is good quality, and there is an entire tube of good cement to use. I am a 50/50 user of medium-viscosity cement and the thin stuff, so this will go for quite a few more models.

The die-hard armour builders may quibble that there is no weathering on this tank. It may come in time, but at present it is fresh from reconstruction in Ess Bend Engineering and the client may want to keep it sheltered from the elements. Some parks let their tanks rot in the rain – some museums keep them in atmospheric-controlled conditions. We shall see.

Was this a fearsome battle machine? Well probably as fearsome as the Polish armoured car I built a few months ago. If they potted you with the 20mm Hotchkiss while you were in a plain lorry that would have been deadly enough and if they ran over your foot with the track it would have been just too bad. Think of it as a Bren-gun carrier with a tin box on the top.

Note that I left the tin box as a separate item – the interior is so detailed it would have been a shame to hide it. This also accounts for the appearance of every door on the thing being flung wide open. Perhaps the crew are spring cleaning or someone saw a spider and they opened it up hoping the thing would run away.