(13 Aug 2022, 11:05 am)citaro5284 wrote Which of course they did many yers ago.....Whitley Bay.

Clearly Arriva think they can operate their operations north of the Tyne with only 2 main depots with the outstation at Alnwick. 

Just having a bit of a think and how many depots/outstations did Arriva/United use to have north of the Tyne - I am thinking Whitley Bay, Blyth, Ashington, Morpeth, Gallowgate, Hexham and Jesmond.  Did they have a depot at Berwick or was that a bit of an outstation, think they had something around Wooler too?

Yeah agreed with the 2 depots.

Just had a look online and got this from Wikipedia (caveats and all that)

Allenheads (Outstation) - The Barn
Alnwick - Lisburn Street
Ashington - Lintonville Terrace
Berwick - Marygate
Blyth - Bridge Street
Hexham - Burn Lane
Morpeth - Dark Lane
Newcastle (Gallowgate) - Gallowgate
Newcastle (Jesmond) - Portland Terrace
Rothbury - High Street
Seahouses (Outstation) - Public Car Park
Whitley Bay - Park Avenue
Wooler - South Road

Berwick was a full depot as far as I'm aware though as the local town services were served from there who are ran by Border Buses? now.

(13 Aug 2022, 11:45 am)peter wrote Part of me feels like at one time it ran commercially to Benton Asda and the stretch through to Whitley Bay was a deminimis extension where they fund the operator to extend a route (like GNE's 61 recently). Certainly in a FOI in 2016 the 51 is only partly secured. Perhaps at some point since then Arriva pulled out of running the Benton Asda stretch commercially and so that's now funded by Nexus too under a separate contract.

Yeah agreed, it's a weird one though as it doesn't go out for tender, as far as I'm aware, which suggests that it's maybe only part subsidised or there's some different form of deal for it. Not aware of any other routes which avoid tendering altogether where they don't run anything commercial on it.