(18 Aug 2019, 11:10 pm)streetdeckfan wrote

The Xlines livery, for the most part, is just the 2019 corporate livery with red changed to gold, and the blue changing depending on the route.

The colour of the Sapphire might be the same as corporate, but in terms of actual Arriva branding, there was very little. I'm not disputing that the updated Sapphire livery does now have the large Arriva logo, but when it was first launched, it looks like they tried to distance Sapphire from Arriva as much as possible.

As for the constant changes on the X21, I can't argue with you there!

IMO, Castles Express was one of the best route brands that GNE ever came up with, mostly because it didn't feel as tacky as some of the others.

I personally don't particularly like change to the Xlines brand, even now people in Tindale still don't know what the X21 is, the amount of people I've seen trying to get on with an Arriva ticket thinking the X1 has been rebranded!

Agree with your comments that both of the original Sapphire & MAX brands distanced themselves from the core Arriva identity. It was said at the time that this was intentional - to break away from the norm, making these buses stand out as being the "posh" buses.

The Stagecoach Gold colourscheme was designed with the same purpose in mind, although obviously the brand name backs up the main Stagecoach brand in this instance.

I'd suggest that the same idea applied to Xlines. It is clear that the 'road stripe' concept is what keeps all of Go North East's brands under one hat now. The road stripes are still used on Xlines, but used the opposite way round to create an 'X'. It looks different, but has connotations of the main Go North East brand.