(30 Oct 2022, 5:09 pm)L469 YVK wrote What is the longer term plan? Will Arriva keep an outstation at Walkergate or eventually mothball and fully merge into Blyth and or Ashington when network is revised again in the future?
You would hope Arriva will take the opportunity to rationalise everything really. They could have quite a streamlined operation going.
If they got an order of 8-10 MMC's for the X10/X11, displaying the MAX Pulsars to Durham to replace the ALX400's then you could have the following:
Blyth
X7/X8/X9 - DB300's
X10/X11 - MMC's
306/308 - DB300's
51/52/53/54/55 - Streetlites
Ashington
X14/15/18/20 - MMC's
X21/22 - MMC's
1/2 - Pulsars
43/44/45 - E400's
35 - E400's
57/57A - Solo's
553 - Solo's
555 - Solo's
685 - Pulsars
This of course assumes that no other services get binned. If there wasn't room at Blyth, you could even move the X10/11 to Ashington with the other MMC services (which I swear was rumoured at one point). That way you're keeping common fleets together. You'd need 1579/80 from Durham to have enough Streetlites, and admittedly you'd probs also have to have E400's as spares at Blyth (tho ideally you'd get 7618/19/26/27 back from Yorkshire in exchange for 7557/8/60/62 though that's probably not that likely - 7609/10 would also be displaced back to Blyth from the Whitby Park and Ride).
If they really had the funds they could get 20 MMC's for the 306-308. Then 10 DB300's could go on the 43/44/45 displacing the 57 plate Enviro's (7501-7507/9 + 7522) to Durham to replace the 55-reg ALX's. The 10 MAX Pulsars could be used for other displacements (Centro's perhaps)