CHORLEY'S Mark Worrall came up with a big idea to satisfy his love of old military vehicles - he bought two 60-ton, 750 horsepower Chieftain tanks.

Mark, aged 35, of Eaves Green, Chorley, found the decomissioned tanks through a dealer in Portsmouth.

He parks them up at Botany Bay Villages which has its own collection of military memorabilia.

Both vehicles - 37 ft long with the deactivated gun barrel facing forward, 11ft 6ins wide and 9ft 3ins off the ground - were built in 1969 and only came out of service last March. One even underwent a total refit by the army in 1992.

And Mark, an industrial customer support engineer at EMTEC, NORWEB's test and demonstration centre, Little Carr Lane, Chorley, is quick to point out that the tanks - three quarters of a million pounds new - cost in some cases less than a standard family saloon car. Technically you can take them out on the road without a special licence, but if you hit the kerb with a tracked vehicle you're likely to dig the whole pavement up," said Mark, whose passion for such vehicles began when he bought a 21 ft long, ex-MOD, six-wheel amphibious load carrier and an ex-military, 22-ton, six-wheel low loader breakdown truck.

"Everything has to be twice as big as the vehicle before and I fancied something armoured and tracked.

"I thought about it for a while and decided that only a tank would fit the bill."

Mark's wife Bev, who also works for Norweb in Bolton, said: "People are always asking me why I put up with this hobby - they reckon his mum didn't buy him any Tonka toys when he was a child."

The couple's nine-month-old daughter Lucy is also in on the action. She has been specially kitted out by grandmother in a baby set of olive drab camouflage overalls.

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