Introduction

Austrian model railroad giant Roco released this British Gun Crew-Artillery Group / Geschützbedienung / Servants d' artillerie set as part of their huge HO (1/87) Minitanks series. Minitanks is known for detailing, scale and precision in the model world.

Roco's early series of Minitanks are considered those numbered Z-97 through Z-300. There were some with earlier numbers but these were mainly the non-Minitank models.

The kit

This British gun crew is curious because it was released before any British crewed weapons were released by Minitanks; to my knowledge, none ever were.

The three figures are molded in six pieces. They are very similar to the Tamiya 1/35 figures supplied with their British 6-pounder (57mm) anti-tank gun, Item #35005 (see link).

The molding is moderate quality: soft detail, ejector-plugs, sinkholes, and minor flash.

The model is packaged in a bag stapled to Roco's traditional orange and blue card, with text in English, German, and French. Roco usually printed a brief history of the model on the back of the card, but not with these figures.

Roco Today

Roco was forced into reorganization recently and the Minitanks series is now distributed by Herpa. For this reason, I refer to the series simply as Minitanks. Herpa's website states,”On October 1, 2007, Herpa has taken on the worldwide distribution of the military series Minitanks. In cooperation with the Modelleisenbahn GmbH (Roco), the line will be continuously advanced and extended.”