What cant be classed as a rumour is when the whole 'West Durham Swift' to be upgraded to Volvo B9TL Wright Gemini 2s. And yes, i do have proof for this :p
In the January 2012 edition of 'Buses' magazine there was a whole article on Go North East (titled 'Angel of the North', from the late Peter Huntley was managing director. Located under the 'Cascades and SimpliCity' subheading is the following:
"Investment in key corridors has delivered impressive growth and has been refined to the point where Huntley says capital investment in one corridor can be justified not just on the growth it will generate there byt on what can be achieved by cascading and refurbishing two more sets of buses to reinvigorate less busy rutes with their own modest growth potential."
All this is good. Its from the next sentence where my point gets proven:
"A case in this point is the West Durham Swift network linking relatively cheap housing in Lanchester, Consett and Stanley with jobs in Gateshead and Newcastle. This has grown by over 20% since its launch with new Scania OmniCity single-deckers in 2007 and will be upgraded next year with new Wright-bodied Volvo B9TL double-deckers, which will remove the need for extra peak hour single-deckers. Double-deckers are the only cost-effective way of handling growth in the peaks."
Then it goes onto what was supposed to happen with the Scanias:
"Some of the displaced Scanias will be refurbished to upgrade the Lime branded 78 route between Consett and Sunderland in turn moving older Wright-bodied Volvo B10BLEs to replace less reliable lighter weight single-deckers elsewhere.
As we know, Peter Huntley left and was replaced. These plans then went out the window when the new managing director came in for whatever reason and quite frankly would have ruined hopes of people that use these routes as they instead of getting an upgrade, stuck with the buses they had and in the WDS networks case, got older buses that are no where near as luxurious as the Scanias that had proceeded them.
