Stagecoach Sunderland X34 services are moving to South Shields. Not sure on exact dates, but they want them to be running during the strike periods and then full time afterwards

13th November is the planned date for move of X34 operations to South Shields.


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13th November is the planned date for move of X34 operations to South Shields.


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Wonder what Sunderland is going to do when they can't pinch the deckers off the X34 to allocated to the schools due to the reliability of the E400s

13th November is the planned date for move of X34 operations to South Shields.


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13th November for the rumoured service changes too?

Wonder what Sunderland is going to do when they can't pinch the deckers off the X34 to allocated to the schools due to the reliability of the E400s

I’m sure it was mentioned that 2 deckers have transferred from Sunderland to Stockton , so Stockton will do 2 scholars during the strike and permanent afterwards


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not a good day on the roads today. I was on the 71 out of Newcastle travelling on 24112 i believe it was, had to vehicle change at slatyford depot due to a defect, the new vehicle was 24110 I believe , driver said it was the 2nd vehicle change on the 71 today.

within literally 1 minute at the westerhope roundabout smoke started pouring out from a hole in the vehicle deck, (could literally see the road through the gap) every time the driver accelerated hard or braked hard, a few punters nearly had a panic but once pulled over (like every time i went to a breakdown with SNE) the defect disappears. after i got off and the vehicle pulled away what happens thick smoke again. the amount of smoke that ended up in the passenger saloon that vehicle would not pass a PSV MOT. there needs to be a massive investment soon or service will massively suffer

I’m sure it was mentioned that 2 deckers have transferred from Sunderland to Stockton , so Stockton will do 2 scholars during the strike and permanent afterwards


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The two deckers which went to Stockton for the strikes returned to Sunderland last Monday afternoon

not a good day on the roads today. I was on the 71 out of Newcastle travelling on 24112 i believe it was, had to vehicle change at slatyford depot due to a defect, the new vehicle was 24110 I believe , driver said it was the 2nd vehicle change on the 71 today.

within literally 1 minute at the westerhope roundabout smoke started pouring out from a hole in the vehicle deck, (could literally see the road through the gap) every time the driver accelerated hard or braked hard, a few punters nearly had a panic but once pulled over (like every time i went to a breakdown with SNE) the defect disappears. after i got off and the vehicle pulled away what happens thick smoke again. the amount of smoke that ended up in the passenger saloon that vehicle would not pass a PSV MOT. there needs to be a massive investment soon or service will massively suffer

The question is will Stagecoach invest though. Like now it’s all very well moving the better buses to Newcastle and buying new for there but then why should Hartlepool continue to get buses which really are no good and end up getting the ones which are no good at Newcastle.  They should really invest in all depots across the region but we know they won’t.

The question is will Stagecoach invest though. Like now it’s all very well moving the better buses to Newcastle and buying new for there but then why should Hartlepool continue to get buses which really are no good and end up getting the ones which are no good at Newcastle.  They should really invest in all depots across the region but we know they won’t.

i can understand Newcastle getting the brand-new buses as they will pay for themselves quicker and Newcastle tends to be the money-making depots, but I don't think that any area regardless of whether it's a low-cost depot or not should be using substandard buses. say for example all the darts that keep turning up if they are better than E200s or even MMCs then as long as they are safe to use and not a detriment to passengers why not use them.

The two deckers which went to Stockton for the strikes returned to Sunderland last Monday afternoon

No 1980/19681 are still here operating today?

No 1980/19681 are still here operating today?

They are Stockton's
19383 and 19644 were on-loan to Stockton from Sunderland during the recent strike to operate their Durham Council School Contracts (the 5045 from Deaf Hill to Sedgefield College and the SL6 from High Pittington to Durham St Leonard's)

MAN Enviro 200 39714 was involved in a fairly substantial accident yesterday teatime in Hendon during a police pursuit. Target vehicle was a Pharmacy delivery van which had been stolen shortly before the accident. The van collided with the front nearside of the bus, wrecking the bodywork and passenger doorframe. minor damage caused to the rear after the out of control van ended up wedged against the rear. I passed the bus on Suffolk Street just ahead of the pursuit, didn't imagine the bus would end up involved....

MAN Enviro 200 39714 was involved in a fairly substantial accident yesterday teatime in Hendon during a police pursuit. Target vehicle was a Pharmacy delivery van which had been stolen shortly before the accident. The van collided with the front nearside of the bus, wrecking the bodywork and passenger doorframe. minor damage caused to the rear after the out of control van ended up wedged against the rear. I passed the bus on Suffolk Street just ahead of the pursuit, didn't imagine the bus would end up involved....

wonder if they will bother to fix it or use it as spare parts

Given its age, and the fact that they've already withdrawn a substantial amount of the MAN E200s, I doubt they'll be fixing it .

wonder if they will bother to fix it or use it as spare parts

Spares.

The question is will Stagecoach invest though. Like now it’s all very well moving the better buses to Newcastle and buying new for there but then why should Hartlepool continue to get buses which really are no good and end up getting the ones which are no good at Newcastle.  They should really invest in all depots across the region but we know they won’t.

Is the issue that Newcastle actually doesn't have enough routes doing well which are also single decker operated, which means cascades are more difficult? 

I can think of only the 30/31 which has new vehicles. Dodgy old (fully depreciated) MANs can still be found on most Slatyford single routes.

Is the issue that Newcastle actually doesn't have enough routes doing well which are also single decker operated, which means cascades are more difficult? 

I can think of only the 30/31 which has new vehicles. Dodgy old (fully depreciated) MANs can still be found on most Slatyford single routes.

I have a feeling Covid messed things up. Their fleet is starting to become a problem in some areas to the state of First's fleet before they flogged everything off especially since they haven't bought a bus in England since bar one small batch down South.

Stagecoach Midlands, Stagecoach South and Stagecoach South West are particularly bad and riddled with Darts, 15+ year old Solo's and ALX 400's, one being an 04 plate and in the new livery. Even the flagship Manchester fleet has 250+ 08/58 Enviro 400's in frontline service and on paper should be withdrawn next year and usually be sent elsewhere to withdraw the ALX's above.

They're in a big of a mess imo, the North East is generally doing 'alright'.

24116 has now entered service at Slatyford

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I have a feeling Covid messed things up. Their fleet is starting to become a problem in some areas to the state of First's fleet before they flogged everything off especially since they haven't bought a bus in England since bar one small batch down South.

Stagecoach Midlands, Stagecoach South and Stagecoach South West are particularly bad and riddled with Darts, 15+ year old Solo's and ALX 400's, one being an 04 plate and in the new livery. Even the flagship Manchester fleet has 250+ 08/58 Enviro 400's in frontline service and on paper should be withdrawn next year and usually be sent elsewhere to withdraw the ALX's above.

They're in a big of a mess imo, the North East is generally doing 'alright'.

yeah, i agree with this, i think Manchester is just too big if your not constantly putting new vehicles in service,

i suppose for example if say London had 75 EVs either long term leased or purchased out right one year cascading some of the older hybrids they have which i think is 2010-2013 registered examples to Manchester,

and then the year after Manchester had 75 new vehicles again either purchased outright or on a long term lease you could renew they fleet abit more. although lets not forget they have received new electric vehicles every year for the last 3 years so its not like they haven't had anything

yeah, i agree with this, i think Manchester is just too big if your not constantly putting new vehicles in service,

i suppose for example if say London had 75 EVs either long term leased or purchased out right one year cascading some of the older hybrids they have which i think is 2010-2013 registered examples to Manchester,

and then the year after Manchester had 75 new vehicles again either purchased outright or on a long term lease you could renew they fleet abit more. although lets not forget they have received new electric vehicles every year for the last 3 years so its not like they haven't had anything

Don't believe Manchester has had any electrics, their last batch looking at bustimes, caveats and all that was 2020. In England there has been very little.

I'm not even sure 150 vehicles is enough, it would help Manchester but it won't help everywhere else. Stagecoach was on a massive spending spree in 2007 - 2012 or so and it's all coming for renewal now. If they don't spend big then they'll be playing catch up.

Usually what Stagecoach is buy new buses for the North East, Manchester and other profitable divisions before they're life expired then send them off to the least profitable divisions to do a couple years before they're withdrawn.

However since they haven't done this some of the divisions ie. Stagecoach East Midlands - https://bustimes.org/operators/stagecoac...n/vehicles are with an ancient fleet. You can see it happening with ours, Manchesters and Cambridge's / Oxford's older Deckers (including the OU10xxx batch) but it's just stopped so now they're stuck with expired Decker's. Investing to displace the 08 Decker's next year won't help much as it's just sending them more expired Decker's they needed to be sent in 2020 really.

It's a bit of a mess and what happened at First.

Stagecoach Manchester has a fleet of BYD Electric double deckers https://www.flickr.com/photos/gjm-photog...1119094641

Stagecoach Manchester has a fleet of BYD Electric double deckers https://www.flickr.com/photos/gjm-photog...1119094641

Aye knew about them, meant post Covid, quoted post said they've had electrics the past 3 years. Didn't word it well tbh.

I do believe there's another batch coming with the ZEBRA at Stockport aswell before 2024.

Aye knew about them, meant post Covid, quoted post said they've had electrics the past 3 years. Didn't word it well tbh.

I do believe there's another batch coming with the ZEBRA at Stockport aswell before 2024.

i cant find the article now but basically said vehicles were meant to be delivered over 3 years starting 2019, now i think of it i dont know if was talking about the group as a whole not just Manchester.

as for the age of vehicles i know some of the older stuff like ALXs and darts are still mechanically sound from an engineering view and as long as chassis and bodies etc are still good they could probably last another ten years, not that stagecoach should aim for this but i think the 3 main regions of London, Manchester and north east as long as they are in profit should be regularly receiving new vehicles and cascading older stuff to other divisions, 

look at the MANviros here in the north east that are getting replaced by older darts, as long as a vehicle is safe to use and does not put passengers at a disadvantage in any way why bother replacing a batch of 2004 registered vehicles if they are still economical to run when say a 2008 batch of vehicles is life expired

i cant find the article now but basically said vehicles were meant to be delivered over 3 years starting 2019, now i think of it i dont know if was talking about the group as a whole not just Manchester.

as for the age of vehicles i know some of the older stuff like ALXs and darts are still mechanically sound from an engineering view and as long as chassis and bodies etc are still good they could probably last another ten years, not that stagecoach should aim for this but i think the 3 main regions of London, Manchester and north east as long as they are in profit should be regularly receiving new vehicles and cascading older stuff to other divisions, 

look at the MANviros here in the north east that are getting replaced by older darts, as long as a vehicle is safe to use and does not put passengers at a disadvantage in any way why bother replacing a batch of 2004 registered vehicles if they are still economical to run when say a 2008 batch of vehicles is life expired

Must've been the whole group, definitely hasn't been anything else in Manchester.

Don't disagree with what your saying but let's be honest the MAN buses should be getting withdrawn asap with new vehicles, the fact they're replacing them with Dart's is embarrassing really - mind it'll be interesting to see where the Inverness Enviro 200's end up.

The catch-22 is if you do that you end up chasing things as something else breaks, the early Enviro 200's / Enviro 300's aren't particular the most healthy of things either and should be getting pulled.

Losing the ZEBRA bid in Teesside probably hasn't helped either as it would've sorted the mess out aswell no doubt, believe the 36 was part of that bid.

Must've been the whole group, definitely hasn't been anything else in Manchester.

Don't disagree with what your saying but let's be honest the MAN buses should be getting withdrawn asap with new vehicles, the fact they're replacing them with Dart's is embarrassing really - mind it'll be interesting to see where the Inverness Enviro 200's end up.

The catch-22 is if you do that you end up chasing things as something else breaks, the early Enviro 200's / Enviro 300's aren't particular the most healthy of things either and should be getting pulled.

Losing the ZEBRA bid in Teesside probably hasn't helped either as it would've sorted the mess out aswell no doubt, believe the 36 was part

looking at the north east in particular i do think that it wouldn't be particularly wise to hasten the demise of the Darts and ALX 300s while they have issues with other vehicles,

stuff like the 2005 E300s, 2008 E300s and some of the 2009 E300s are already showing their age and i think some of the ALX300s as long as they have sufficient spare parts will outlast some of mentioned vehicles. some of the E400s are also the same. i think especially here it needs to be a balance of getting rid knackered vehicles and getting of old vehicles that may still have some life left

looking at the north east in particular i do think that it wouldn't be particularly wise to hasten the demise of the Darts and ALX 300s while they have issues with other vehicles,

stuff like the 2005 E300s, 2008 E300s and some of the 2009 E300s are already showing their age and i think some of the ALX300s as long as they have sufficient spare parts will outlast some of mentioned vehicles. some of the E400s are also the same. i think especially here it needs to be a balance of getting rid knackered vehicles and getting of old vehicles that may still have some life left

Aye to be fair the North East fleet isn't too bad really though. Ideally though what they need to do is invest in some fleet somewhere and just displace everything out of it whether that's the North East or Lancashire or wherever and get arid of the elderly buses across the board.

Similar with Decker's really they badly need to just make a massive order for somewhere like Manchester or Newcastle and just displace 100's of buses to get arid of the elderly buses across the fleet.

There doesn't seem to be any investment at all though bar partially funded buses though SCOTZEB or ZEBRA though and being bought by an investment firm probably isn't going to help matters either.

Today saw the first day of Stagecoach Newcastle on the Sunday working of Arriva Northumbria 54 service.

As with the first day of the 317 earlier this year I decided to head out early and capture the first working which was the 0810 from Haymarket as a short working to Shiremoor Boundary Mills. As it turned out I was the only passenger for the whole trip.

The first working was worked by 12067 which is seen here at Quorum Business Park while working to Shiremoor https://flic.kr/p/2nWfr53

12067 can also been seen here on arrival in to Haymarket before starting the 0810, the first time in a number of years a Stagecoach service has operated in to Haymarket https://flic.kr/p/2nW93Wm

Aye to be fair the North East fleet isn't too bad really though. Ideally though what they need to do is invest in some fleet somewhere and just displace everything out of it whether that's the North East or Lancashire or wherever and get arid of the elderly buses across the board.

Similar with Decker's really they badly need to just make a massive order for somewhere like Manchester or Newcastle and just displace 100's of buses to get arid of the elderly buses across the fleet.

There doesn't seem to be any investment at all though bar partially funded buses though SCOTZEB or ZEBRA though and being bought by an investment firm probably isn't going to help matters either.

well they bought two operators in London so that should be more money coming in.

i think SNE would be to small to buy say for example 50 double Deckers in one year. that would mean the 2011 hybrids would probably be oldest Deckers in the north east fleet which wouldn't be to bad.

i think 25 double decks a year for 4 years would sort out SNE massively and the cascade (for example to cumbria) could be the 2007,2008 and 2010 E400s bringing the fleet age down over there (they still have ALX400s as standby buses) and maybe send the hybrids to Manchester as what happened with the oxford examples

24116 has now entered service at Slatyford

I notice that according to BusTimes 22890 has returned to Cumbria after a long spell over here at Slatyford. Given that BusTimes can occasionally be wrong, can anyone confirm whether 22890 ever actually arrived in the North East, as it never seemed to see service here ?

Also, can anyone please confirm what happened to Walkergate's 12080 ? Has it been withdrawn, and if so, why ?

I notice that according to BusTimes 22890 has returned to Cumbria after a long spell over here at Slatyford. Given that BusTimes can occasionally be wrong, can anyone confirm whether 22890 ever actually arrived in the North East, as it never seemed to see service here ?

Also, can anyone please confirm what happened to Walkergate's 12080 ? Has it been withdrawn, and if so, why ?

Was definitely in the NE, sat dumped at the back of Slatyford.  No idea if it's still there or not.

I notice that according to BusTimes 22890 has returned to Cumbria after a long spell over here at Slatyford. Given that BusTimes can occasionally be wrong, can anyone confirm whether 22890 ever actually arrived in the North East, as it never seemed to see service here ?

Also, can anyone please confirm what happened to Walkergate's 12080 ? Has it been withdrawn, and if so, why ?

12080 still clinging on

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