(12 Nov 2023, 2:18 pm)mb134 wrote Honestly I'm not expecting those electrics to arrive at any point soon, it seems like since the announcement in January there's been nothing else on them bar the charging points being installed at Blyth - but logically if they're redoing the depot anyway, it would make sense to install those? 

Thinking behind the newer E400s leaving Blyth was purely to displace the 58 plates at Ashington, it doesn't make sense to send them DB300s which would be oddballs and also needing replacing soon-ish. 



With the idea I'd posted, I think I'd intended the 67 plate Streetlites to end up on the 2 & 8 at Darlington. It would leave 5 spare, which would pretty much be the single deck/minibus spare allocation at the depot. I don't really know where else you send them, they're a pretty bad batch of buses reliability wise too, and so keeping them where they have always been might be the best solution?

You'd then have 1473/4/6/7/8 and 1507/8/9/11 to use on the 1, and then 1590-4 and 1514-6 and 1522 for the 7. Thinking was that the movement down of 7523/39/56 would be an improvement on reliability compared to 7518-20 so they'd actually be available. 

I suppose you could do a batch of E400 MMCs (say the 16x I'd put down for Durham) for Darlington to fully cover the 7, and the other boards which need deckers, then send 7534-8/40 to Durham (plus 7556) which would allow the B7TLs and 7510 to be withdrawn. 7609/10 would replace 7511/2. 


I think there's the X46, then also a few boards on the 6 & 22, and the ED2? Obviously at the moment the deckers there are very much end of life so I'd hazard a guess at them being allocated to the likes of the 43/64 is more a reflection of their inability to do a 6/22 rather than the need of them on the 43/64.

Some runs on the 64 very much need double deck capacity but for most of the day,even when busy, the nature of the typical passenger and their journey (mainly older people and young families mostly lugging bags of shopping in one direction of their short hop journey) a full length single decker seems to be optimal.

I’m just glad the E200s are mostly off it because the aisle was often full of trolleys and bags due to lack of legroom