(12 Jan 2016, 8:41 pm)DaveyBowyer wrote Well that's Arriva for you. Get away with doing the bare minimum and yes, I know there's a good few routes where GNE have sheds knocking about but unlike GNE, Arriva's key and core routes are simply being run into the ground with cast off vehicles and too many dodgy workings with minimal effort of allocating the right vehicles.

Why refurbish 6 year old buses (at the time), for a PREMIUM service which of course had a very questionable history and Arriva are now in a position of not being able to cascade these vehicles (unless another division wants more spares). And secondly, why don't Arriva actually invest into the X20 and try to create growth on it?

Put it this way, if Arriva keep doing the bare minimum they can get away with, then it won't be long before we hear some E400s with voith gearboxes knocking around Northumberland and it won't do Arriva any favours.

I wonder if the reason for the mixed age of buses allocated for Sapphire X21/X22 is possibly because buying new buses for the full X21/X22 was unjustifiable, I am not totally familiar with the passenger loadings throughout the day, but when I have used the services in question the services have carried a very small amount of passengers throughout the journeys between Newcastle and Ashington, I've never observed any more than about 20 passengers throughout a journey between Newcastle and Ashington which seems a lot less than when I do a typical journey on the Sapphire 7, in fact in most cases, there will usually be 20 passengers on-board at just whichever stop I board on the route throughout the typical daytime hours. So I'm wondering if the sparse number of passengers on some X21/X22 journeys through the day was potentially the reason for only buying some newer buses and refurbishing others to make up the PVR. Do feel it wasn't the best thing to do with this being a Sapphire route but I imagine that there is a valid reason for why this was done.

I feel it could be a similar story for the X20, especially with the fairly recent extention from Amble through to Alnwick, again the few times I have used the service it hasn't been busy by any stretch. I think the reason for such old buses having to be sourced for the X20 may likely to be it not justifying new stock but the lacking of double deckers purchases over the years until recently probably hasn't helped, the fact that between the Lowlander's arriving in 2001 and the Enviro 400's plus Lowlander's 7453-7456 in 2007 the only new double deckers bought between them orders was 7445/7446, so the reason why we probably have so many London cast offs is probably as old step entrance stock needed replacing, particularly with DDA compliance coming into play. Hopefully we'll see more double deckers purchases being made in the upcoming years and hopefully rely less on cast offs from other divisions, particularly if they have spent many years being pushed to within an inch of their lives.