(27 Aug 2015, 2:00 pm)Jimmi wrote We did have a few over the years although it seemed like they'd only be trialled on one route and wouldn't be around very long. I remember the 723 (now the Sapphire 7) had trialled a Scania Omnicity and a Optare Solo. Also remember another Optare Versa demonstrator at Darlington which I only ever saw a photo of operating the Darlington 5A. It's a shame we don't get many demonstrators in the North East anymore as we have some pretty demanding routes which would be ideal to test their performance capabilities.
Think my lack of demonstrator knowledge lies in the fact that they've never ventured north of the Tyne then!
But you hit the nail on the head, the X18, the X93 etc, are very demanding routes, if a bus performs well on those, they'll handle anything. You wouldn't want B9TL operating a city route though, like you wouldn't want a Streetdeck on the X93, which is why I don't agree with Arriva's 'E400 for everything' policy, although I'd prefer E400's everywhere than Streetdeck's everywhere...