Büssing Ludewig Aero

Description

Until the 1950s, it was quite common to see busses with trailers. However, in 1960 this was forbidden because of safety reasons. So, there were two choices: use double deck or articulated busses. A third variant was called 1 1/2 deck, and was a mixture of a standard bus with a double deck, only the rear part had a second passenger deck. The bodywork of these types was almost exclusively built by Ludewig, usually based on a Büssing frame. In the late 1960s, Büssing had a market share of more than 80% in this sector. These busses were quite common in West Germany, especially in the Rhein/Ruhr area, throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The rapid development of better articulated busses set the end for this type of bus in the mid 1970s.

This is the only 1 1/2 deck type in the set. It is a three door city bus, but due to the complicated inner layout of the decks, load times are comparably high. Still, it has a capacity advantage to other busses while being shorter than articulated types.

Technical Data

Images and Screenshots

Photos can be found here and here.