Is this ALX400 Low Height? (1 Viewer)

tr673

I'm a Scania
Apr 19, 2017
525
25
1,191
Notts or Lincs...
www.flickr.com
I have a bit of a stupid question...
One thing that has been bugging me lately is whether a particular bus is low height or not - this stemmed from me looking at First buses while thinking about liveries I could make for V3D's B7TL and I discovered a discrepancy in height between different batches.

First off, I kept finding images of 'LT52' registered buses that were ex-London, such as:


They have gasket glazing and a one piece upper deck windscreen, both of which look weird on a First bus.

Then I found some that did actually look like the one we have in OMSI. Weirdly, there is a big gap between the top of the destination glass and the upper deck windscreen:


I assumed that was a low height vehicle, but then I found these particularly squashed-looking ALX400s that all seem to be 53 plates from East Anglia:


The destination glass is even shallower with an equal distance to the upper and lower windscreens, plus the lower deck windows look closer to the tops of the wheel arches, comparing how crammed in the speech bubble shaped sticker is to the above two buses.

Does that mean the ones with the gap are full height with a shallower blind glass or are the 'Anglia Specials' just super low? And if so, why?

(btw none of the linked photos are mine as I am neither called John nor am I a Dennis Dart SLF - I'm called tr673 and I'm a Scania)
 

whistlehead

Alias Mr Hackenbacker
UKDT
Add-on London Team
Dec 10, 2015
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One indicator you can use is the T-side advertising board - these are always a standard size. Forward-staircase ALX400s always use one of these two: Forward Stem or Off-centre Stem. Particularly note that the upper boards are always ~650mm tall, so you can use this to gauge the height between decks.

Another indicator of a full-height ALX400 is that the driver's signalling window extends below the lower edge of all the other lower deck windows (as the windows themselves are mounted higher up). You can see that clearly in the top picture.

Looking closely at the second two pictures, you can see that the second on has rubber edge guards on the wheelarches, which makes them look a little bit bigger and might explain why the lower deck windows look lower down than the one above it. However, interestingly I also note that the tops of these lower deck windows are in line with the top of the emergency exit window, wheras in the one above they are lined up.

Perhaps it is a specific version.
 

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