Bumping an old thread. The Dennis Loline was a licence built copy of the Bristol Lodekka chassis.
flickr.com/photos/36844288@N00/44804730575
This employed a different mehod to the AEC of driving the rear axle while utilising a very low floor albeit only really 'low in the centre gangway. Three designs were tried. In the prototype and trial vehicles a drop down gearset lowered the output from the gearbox. The propshaft ran through the offside crossmembers but inside the main chassis rails. Mid chassis it met a crossdrive gearset incorporating differential gearing. From there the drive was split the offside continuing in a straight line while the nearside turned 90 degrees across the chassis to another set of bevel gears which turned the drive rearwards again. Both rear propshafts then drove separate worm and wheel final drive gears on each side of the rear axle.
The first production version was simplified, eliminating the centre gearing and twin rear propshafts and substituting spur gears on either side of the rear axle with spiral bevel gear final drive and a differential gearing in the offside unit.
The final version employed air suspension using trailing arms, a cross beam and a Panhard rod.
archive.commercialmotor.com/arti … ng-lodekka
The use of dropdown gearing for the gearbox output resulted in clockwise propshaft rotation requiring, like the plumber block and transfer case Albion transmission, special final drive gearing.
As far as I can see AEC’s machinery carrier could have been made to be front wheel drive. From AEC’s experience with FWD and Hardy designs they could have incorporated a transfer gearset behind the main gearbox with its propshaft running forwards to a driven front axle.