(31 May 2015, 5:49 pm)Tommy_1581 wrote I like the sound of that...
7519-7521 to Belmont and we receive the 57-reg Lowlanders and refurbish them to MAX for X20?
Only be 3 of the Lowlander if it's true - as for MAX refurbishment, no idea
(31 May 2015, 5:52 pm)Dan wrote Agree.
I can come up with two plausible reasons:
Or it could just boil down to poor allocations, which should be nipped in the bud from higher above...
- Capacity issues on the Durham - Middlesbrough stretch of the route on Belmont's boards at peak times making it illogical to allocate a single deck vehicle. However, if this was the case, why wasn't a double-deck vehicle selected to be converted to MAX specification opposed to a single-deck?
- The bus is being kept local, at the request of the depot's engineering department (owing to a previous fault), as they want to make sure it's settled in before sending it out on a demanding service like the X12. This becomes less and less likely the more time it spends on these services, though. This has been ongoing since January...
Maybe they didn't do a decker because there's so few modern decker vehicles in the fleet that weren't already earmarked for other runs. Plus, I believe, it was only after 1415/6 were completed that Durham requested a sixth decker to convert their entire operation to decker. As for the poor allocation comment - if it's the only bus left without a defect, would you rather have no bus?