(12 Nov 2023, 1:27 pm)Storx wrote Honestly agree with all that.

For the X93/X94, I think it's a route they need to be more creative with. Personally, I'd be looking at routes that have a christmas rush and see if they work them with that, the 64 at Durham is the route I'm going to pick here.

So you'd do something like 12 DD's and 5 SD's and the Summer months you have all the deckers allocated at Whitby doing the P&R, X93/X94, and the SD's at Durham when it's less quite due to the college being shut etc but then in the winter month flip the allocation. So most the deckers are at Durham and a mixed allocation of SD's and DD's are at Whitby. There's no need for a full allocation of Decker's in the winter and it would give them a chance for some recovery rather than being rat arsed on the X93 for 12 months of the year.


DD's and X4 SD's out over the season for heavy maintenance to get them up to spec for the next summer so we don't have a repeat of this time round. If there's further issues at Whitby then you take the 2 DD's from Durham and there's no repeat of the farce this year. Any spare deckers at Redcar are on the 62.

I think it possibly makes more sense to keep them all at Redcar than doing constant swaps with Durham, who realistically aren't the right depot to be sending buses to which might need engineering attention. As well, the "summer season" now seems to stretch to the start of November, so you'd not be sending the deckers back to Durham until well after college has started back up again. 

Retaining 7401-6 would allow you to take some of the MMCs off the X93 over the winter for maintenance as required, and as Jimmi pointed out they can be used on the 62 now. It would give Redcar 13 deckers over the summer to play with, which is an additional 2 compared to this year, and the added bonus of 3 of them not being 7424-6. 

If you were to swap them, I'd say Darlington might be more realistic? Once the summer season is over, you could send some there (including 7401-6) for use on the X66/7 in the run up to Christmas, with the added bonus of being able to plan easy swaps between depots if needed.