I've never understood the 79A to be honest.
I don't see what it achieves with its tour of Penshaw, Houghton, Hetton and Easington Lane.
The last version of it had a weird timetable if I remember correctly. The last 3 runs from Houghton towards Fencehouses left at something like 2130, 2240 and 2350. Knowing that it connected with the ex Newcastle X1 arriving at 2130, 2230 and 2330 and knowing there was the potential for people to make connections, didn't seem to be factored in to any timetables.
The 79 is a legacy of the route OK worked back in the day (149?).
GNE inherited it, renumbered it (493?) and ran it on a commercial basis.
Since then, it's been extended, tweaked, chopped, merged, diverted, tweaked again, tendered, operated commercially in whole or part, chopped again and then passed around on a tendered basis by Nexus.
The same Nexus who would lose much more face than GNE if those links were lost.
Almost forgot the impact that each of these changes has on passengers and their ticket purchases too.
An unholy mess of a route, which I think sums up the state of the entire network in one neat little package.
