Roden 819 1/35 GMC PD-3751 Silverside Trailwagon Trailways Company

GMC PD-3751 “Silverside Trailwagon” Trailways Company

The GMC PD3751 Silverside was an intercity bus, created in the mid-1930s by the Yellow Coach automobile company to the order of one of the largest passenger carriers, Greyhound Lines. The bus was a revolution in automobile construction, corrugated aluminum and polymer materials being widely used, and during development special attention was devoted to providing maximum comfort for passengers, since after the construction of a wide network of high-quality highways between all the cities of the country in the years of the Great Depression, railway passenger transportation nearly ended due to its inability to compete with fast auto connections. Series construction commenced from 1939 at the Pontiac West Assembly facility in Pontiac, Michigan, where General Motors had previously assembled pickup vehicles and trucks. In addition to Greyhound Lines, buses of this type were also used by other national carriers, such as Trailways Travels, which served mainly the Southern states. Silversides bus operations continued almost until the end of the 1950s, after which a large number of them were resold to third countries, mainly in Latin America. This bus is one of the classic symbols of the United States, on the same level as Ford cars and Boeing airliners, and personifies the significant technological progress that made this country great in the first half of the 20th century.