With three Dassault Rafales, an Armstrong Withworth Siskin, an Arsenal VG.33 and a Macchi 202 on the go, I felt the need to re-immerse myself a bit into the mud in time for Mad Allied Day this week end..
![Big Smile [:D]](/FSM/CS/emoticons/icon_smile_big.gif)
This is a project I had started a few years back, but I got discouraged working with the all-metal SHQ kit and eventually put the idea aside... I had actually designed the pattern for that SHQ T-26, but it was one of my first designs and some things could have been better. The wheels and tracks, once gone through the casting process left a bit to be desired...
So last week, while shopping, I found Mirage's line of T-26 kits and I though it may be time to rescussitate this idea...
What I'm working on is a ST-26, a bridge-laying variant of the diminutive T-26 tank, itself a copy of the British Vickers 6 Ton tank. Only a few were apparently produced in the late '30s. You can see a rendition in the background of the box art of that Mirage kit:
The hull requires very little in terms of modification, just a new roof to accommodate a very simple, cylindrical, just about feature-less turret. There are a number of attachments for the bridge of course. The main work resides in the bridge itself of course, but 'luckily', most of that had been made a few years back, and the help of a friend who had cast a few resin bits for me.
The Mirage kit is definitely better than "my" T-26 in the SHQ range. Cool little kit with so far really no troubles at all, bar the annoyance of having to 'clean up' so many tiny wheels, but even that is not too bad 'cause there in fact really very little flash. Mirage have a whole series of those tanks in various British, Soviet, Polish and German guises, but so far haven't released the ST-26. I guess the bridge (which is just a frame really - I guess wood was put over the frame
once it had been laid down?) is too complicated to cast...?