It also warns that the short-term retaliation seen by the firms has the long-term effect of deterring competition.Except that, between Newcastle and Hexham (due to the inconsistent performance of Arriva 685) GNE introduced their own service - by extending a previous service 684 that ran part-way from Hexham to Horsley(?) and this now runs 'faster' than the original Arriva 685 service as X84/X85.
Passengers now have the choice of three services per hour instead of the one (not including the TEN - which was the 602).