Altaya 1/72 T-50 has arrived!

Bit of a post-Xmas treat as the posty brought this little beauty yesterday. My 1/72 Altaya die-cast T-50 light tank arrived...

It's a very nice reproduction of the little tank, but comes in Soviet colours (naturally enough I suppose). So, I will have to repaint this.

The 45mm gun is quite good (better than on my Pegasus kits) so it won't need replacing with one of the metal ones I bought. The tracks are 'ok', not brilliant really but acceptable for vinyl 'rubber band' type tracks.

In this 1944 photo you can clearly make out the Finnish three-colour camo pattern
and the additional head-lam fittings. Image source: SA Kua archive.

Checking over at Andreaslarka.net there isn't much modification needed to make it 'Finnish' - it looks like they only removed the very front of the fenders and added a couple of covered headlamps. Otherwise, the Finns used the Soviet T-50 as was (which is good news).

This will be my armour brigade command tank and I have a reference illustration of it - tank No. 601 - in use as a command tank in late 1944. It is painted with the standard Finnish 3-colour camo, with the Finnish crossed and the number '601' in yellow towards the rear of the turret.