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Pigeons! What's not to like about this unusual WW I vehicle subject. This Roden kit has been well-covered in other reviews such as this one by Stefan Szymanski, and this one by Dave W. My goal for this project was to work on my weathering skills, vignette skills, and learn how to use Uschi plywood decals. I'll caveat that I made mistakes and lack a few basic modelling skills. I did the work outside in my garage during the winter so I had a space heater going. In a dumb attempt to speed the paint drying process for the side panels, the plastic warped and I had to rebuild the loft supports from strip styrene but if you look carefully on the left hand side of the bus, you can see melted plastic around the window frame (I rationalized this as a casualty of war). After-market used: NH Detail Type B Omnibus PE detail set Scale 3D pigeons (OO-scale) Scale 3D British soldiers eating/resting Uschi van der Rosten plywood decals Paints: Tamiya and Vallejo Some build notes for anyone else looking to do this subject: The Roden styrene broke easily, either when removing from the sprue gates or when trying to sand the nubs after nipping. I broke the ladder, starter crank, both tools, the horn, two window frames, and the steering wheel. The larger pieces were fine. I used the OOTB screens for the loft. In retrospect, the wire is far too thick and I should have used finer mesh. This would have enabled me to add pigeons in the loft that could be seen. The Roden decals, especially the P O W W W markings for the cans of fluid, have to be trimmed super close to the letters otherwise the carrier film is larger in dimension than the surface being applied to. They took a long time to separate from the backing paper. If you're going to use the PE set from NH Detail, plan ahead as you have to do some filling to apply the fender struts and some sanding on the bonnet to apply the civilian bus numbers. In my haste to construct the model, and get on with the weathering goals, I forgot these steps and ended up using the kit fenders. I couldn't get the PE lantern handles to affix so these were omitted. I found that painting the model as I went was helpful as masking the camouflage below the loft underhang would be difficult. I left the wheels off until the very end as those tyres are narrow and thus the model is not stable to work on if you're handling it for body assembly. If you go the plywood route, don't bother to detail the interior. It is too dark to even see inside from the rear entrance. The curved stairway is fiddly. I ignored any kit inaccuracies such as pointed out by Mr. Szymanski. The Scale 3D pigeons are somewhat larger than the kit pigeons but are way more detailed. Truly superb. There are three printer supports per pigeon - one per foot and one at the tail. Remove the 3D support from one foot, then the next and finally the tail. I broke quite a few feet so don't expect 100% yield here. Pigeons are the racing homer breed and fortunately for me, come in different color varieties. They were fun to paint. Even more fun to position. There's no wrong position for a pigeon! The Scale 3D soldiers are superb in detail - better than any 1/72 figure I have seen in plastic or resin. I did surgery to one of them (the soldier without any kit) so I could make him climbing a ladder - amputated one leg and both arms and then repositioned.

I got this as a Birthday present, having seen a few builds in various sections on here mainly @diablo rsv. I've got a few ideas on how the finish build will look, it will be set in France as during the early stages of the buses conscription. I'm currently taking annual leave and got a bit done, the detail is fantastic, however, with the extremely delicate parts there sprue connections are a little over the top. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-36531984