I've noticed a significant increase in vehicle failures at Ashington recently, particularly on the Alnwick routes.

Just today the following failed:
7512 made it only a few trips into its 35 this morning.
7529 on the X15 around Belford.
7553 on the X18 around Amble.
7555 on the X14 at Newcastle.
7556 on the X15 at Berwick.

7511/12 appear to be increasingly unreliable, when I was last on 7511 in the summer it was ghastly. 7514 has just returned from 2 weeks off the road, before that it was struggling to make it through a day of service - indeed on Monday 4th and Tuesday 5th it was taken out of service on the same board two days running. The 64 and 15 plates (the latter batch *still* had internal Yorkshire branding last I was on one late last year) are going the same way as the rest too, indeed 7555 was restricted to the 35 for a few months last year due to overheating on anything else. The Scanias are probably best ignored, all 3 are somehow out on MAX work today but that happens about once a week at best. 7445 has made it into service a whopping 5 times since Christmas Eve, though only actually completed a full board on 3 of those.

The near constant issues with the MAX deckers means that the 14-plate E400s are getting punted onto the X15/18 etc in their place as presumably they can cope better, leaving the MAX E400s to crawl through their day on the Sapphire routes instead. 

While new vehicles are desperately needed for those routes, I can't help but think engineering standards at Ashington are also falling. The same buses breaking constantly, something being kept on the 35s for months because of overheating (here's an idea, fix it?), 5-6 year old buses unable to perform on their branded routes, all this screams of a poor attitude by the engineering staff and a "that'll do" approach, rather than fixing stuff properly first time.

Then there's the appearance of their vehicles:

• https://flic.kr/p/2koADah. "Does that bumper fit Dave?" "Aye but its the wrong colour and shape" "It's fine man, lets go for lunch".
  
• https://flic.kr/p/DZiNTW. https://flic.kr/p/2kjBhcJ. That's the same vehicle 3 years apart, the same slice through the bodywork between the decks at the rear.
  
• https://flic.kr/p/2kqdeRL. Dented, discoloured, rusting panels all the way along one side.
  

Are depot management blind? Surely, even if they don't have a budget for full repaints, they can make stuff look half presentable.

The new MD being an "experienced engineering director" evidently means sod all. I see Whitby/Redcar had 2 Streetlites on the X93 today too due to a "shortage of serviceable deckers".