(16 Mar 2015, 5:09 pm)aureolin wrote Why yellow out of interest? Never understood why there are 11 MPDs painted yellow with no branding?
The former "Venture" branded examples only ever received the small "East Durham" logo on the front of the vehicle following transfer out of Consett to Peterlee, retaining the taglines at the top of the vehicle on the nearside/offside as they were similar to the "East Durham" branded allocation. I'd assume this is so that the vehicles at Peterlee can generate some revenue via advertising, making the low cost unit more profitable, rather than having the two "East Durham" logos on the nearside/offside?
Dennis MPD/Transbus Mini Pointer 524 (NA52 AWG) was repainted into plain yellow for use on the AD122 last year. I'm not sure if there are any other reasons behind this colour other than it allowing Hexham greater leniency - it wouldn't have been the end of the world if this bus had to be allocated to one of the "Tynedale Links" branded services instead, and customers on the AD122 route would still recognise their bus as being yellow when it was approaching if a branded example had to be allocated to the AD122.
As for MPDs 542, 560, 561 and 564 carrying a plain yellow base livery, I can only assume this is linked to the way things worked a few years ago... Spare buses were always painted in white or yellow, rather than Go North East's corporate livery, as is the norm nowadays. This is why Go North East moved towards a more cost-effective single colour base livery for their corporate livery, as it's easy to identify the vehicle belongs to Go North East, and it's a bit cheaper to repaint a single colour rather than red, blue and yellow.