Not quite a tank.....

 .....but certainly a British infantryman's friend.  Yes it's time for a British diminutive tracked vehicle, the Bren Carrier family.  There were two versions of the carrier in the early war years. the Scout Carrier and the Bren Gun Carrier but these merged into the Universal Carrier from 1940  I have struggled to find anything other than the Universal Carrier as a small scale model so it will have to proxy for sit's earlier brethren.  These were the workhorse of the British and Commonwealth forces, acting as mechanised pack mule, rapid MG team deployment system and much much more.  Don't want to carry your pack, sling into a carrier, need more ammo send it forward in a carrier, need AT rifle or MG or mortar support, here it comes in a carrier.

I now have five of these little gems - the Universal Carrier

These little beasts were based upon a pre war tankette chassis and were in production from the late 1930's until as late as 1960.  It's hard to build a World War Two British force without at least a couple of these useful little beasts.  They were not perfect of course, being open topped and lightly armoured but the idea was that troops didn't fight from the carrier but instead dismounted.  Of course that didn't prevent them from being used without dismounting but it wasn't their planned use.

These are GHQ models in 1/285 scale so the casting is oversized in comparison to the German light tanks I have been working on lately, which are 1/300, but  the real things weren't actually that much different in size to a Panzer I.  The Carrier is the same width as the Panzer I at 2.06 metres (6' 9") but is shorter at 3.66 m (12' 0") as against 4.02 m (13' 2") for the Panzer.  Height wise the Panzer is always going to be taller as it has a turret, standing at 1.72 m (5' 8") v 1.52 m (5' 2").

The only drawback I found when painting them is getting in to paint the crew figures other than that they are lovely castings.  Dare I say small but perfectly formed?