Having a sort through the lead mountain is always a joy, forgotten pieces are revealled with all the excitement from buying them in the first place. This Carden Loyd universal carrier is made by Reiver Miniatures and I picked it up at Salute 2011 while having a natter with Red Rich who’d put on that year’s VBCW game.
It’s a crisp solid metal casting and surprisingly solid for such a small model. It’s few pieces, the chassis, the lid, two tracks and a Vickers HMG. The chassis has a couple of notches so you physically can’t put the tracks on the wrong way around, a smart touch. The Vickers doesn’t have an ammo box, but it’s simple enough to add one and yes it really does go on at that jaunty angle. Not so with the tripod which usually goes on the driver’s side of the “bonnet”. It would be a folded one and I don’t have any of those in my scraps box so I left it off.
I’d rather not base vehicles like this but I did think it’d get whalloped in game so a base was a must. I used the ever wonderful milliput for the ground so I could press the models tracks into it and have trackmarks, if you’re doing this it’s best to do it with the bare metal piece, but if you only think of it after painting you need to get both pieces damp to avoid problems.
I wanted to put a few pieces in the stowage bins, so I used various pieces from the Warlord Games plastic British sprues plus a white metal petrol can. I’m pleased with it, should I do another one I’d do it with the lid propped up and a full crew.
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