Roden 1/35 Greyhound Silversides Intercity Motor Coach
By Chellie Lynn
Overview
What do Rental Cars, Yellow Cab Company, and Greyhound have in common? Short answer: John Hertz.
Long Answer: The Yellow Truck & Coach Company was a joint venture between General Motors and the Yellow Coach Company. In 1943 GM bought out John Hertz's share of the operation and it became the GM Truck & Coach Division. The Yellow Coach PD3701 was introduced in 1939 as the first Greyhound coach designed from the ground up to use the new General Motors 6-71 diesel Engine. This coach was specifically created for Greyhound to their own specifications. The polished, fluted aluminum siding gave rise to the name Silversides.
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The Kit
The box contains the following: 14 gray and 1 clear sprue, 1 photo-etch sheet, decals, instructions, painting & marking guide, a frameable copy of the box art, and a small full color picture card of the coach. All the parts are well molded and finely detailed. This kit does not suffer from "parts count fever" as there are some simplifications, but none that impact accuracy or detail. One of the kits purchased also had a small errata sheet, the others did not have this item.
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The molding is of very high quality, although there are a large number of ejector pin posts that require removal. As I find these pins, I am marking them on the parts tree for the build article. There are also a large number of locator holes that will need to be drilled out. Most of the panel join lines are either at a factory join line or an inconspicuous location.
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Accuracy
Overall, this kit checks out almost perfectly with published factory dimensions. One item that pleases me greatly are the PE silhouettes provided for the running dogs on the sides. On the actual coaches these were painted cutouts attached to the sides. The only glaring inaccuracy in this kit are the wheels. As molded in the kit, they are modern 10 hole aluminum discs. They have the correct number of holes (10), but these should be triangular in shape. The alternate would be 5 holes of a triangular shape. I will not correct these on my first build, as I want it to meet IPMS out-of-box rules. The second build will have the wheels corrected along with any other errors I find.
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Conclusion
Looks good; a test fit indicates assembly should go reasonably well. Onwards to the build, back in a while with the results and any traps I may find. Review kit provided my overheated debit card from Skyway Model Shop.
Context for this Review:
Now, a bit of context, this kit represents a vehicle that I have personal experience with. In 1978, when I first started driving for Metro Transit in Seattle, there were still a significant number of standard transmission coaches in the fleet, inherited from two of the Transit Agencies that were combined to create Metro in 1975. These coaches were not fully retired until mid-1979. Therefore, if you were assigned to the Operating Base where they were located, you had to qualify (prove you could operate) the manual transmissions. Obviously, I succeeded as 43 years later I am still at Metro. Unfortunately, I did not get to actually drive the Silversides, it was retired from the fleet the Friday before I had my manual transmission classes. Yes, somewhere I still have my Metro driver's guides for all the standard transmission coaches.