(04 Feb 2016, 12:27 am)GMitchelhill wrote 85/86 were the old 325/326 circulars.
325 ran anti-clockwise from North Shields - Tynemouth - Marden Estate - Cullercoats - Whitley Bay - Monkseaton - North Tyneside Hospital - New York - West Chirton - Meadowell - North Shields. 326 ran the opposite way around.
The 325/326 were also the first service in the North East of England to be operated by low floor buses. Namely by Dennis Lance SLF / Wright Pathfinder 320s. 5 vehicles were brought for a service with a PVR of 4. However in later years the frequency was increased to every 20 minutes before being numbered the 85/86. In the end the services were discontinued as they were uneconomical to run as a circular service. It has been replaced as follows....
1 replaced Whitley Bay - Cullercoats - Marden Estate - Tynemouth - North Shields
310 replaced North Shields - Meadowell - West Chirton
W3 replaced Whitley Bay - Monkseaton - North Tyneside Hospital - New York - West Chirton.
i remember them routes bringing back the classic days when i was a kid growing up in the South Tyneside area we had the 520/521/522/X22/524/526/527/528/532/534 i used to sometimes use Jarrow to travel on the old 310/319 on the then new Darts which are now long gone within the fleet 310 used to ran to Blyth while 319 to Cramlington sometimes my Grandma Isobella used to take me on some bus rides back in 2000s along with my Nana Eileen i remember one ride i was on a newly bought Olympian some are still here clinging on to dear life but was on the 527 service and it was just so smooth the ride back home thats how i started to like buses in the first place cause of the olympians the ones new in 1998 were my childhood bus eg 3926 but me and my dad got on an old Leyland Olympian when it was in the old Wear Buses livery and was probs my first bus journey it was free the ASDA Free Bus heading to my mums work and back usually the trip home was a Leyland National wish they could bring back the old classic services and recycle the old routes by having a massive revamp would be handy but replacing the lost links with mini buses i used to like the 2 city connection but nowadays would be ran by a single decker as DDA rules but 10 years ago i started to see the old RBY livery change like some vehicles would be repainted out of the livery and into a new brand which some have came and went while others have been revised to look smart even renumbered like 222 is now 20 but i miss them days when it used to have the 3 digit number then the management team changed it if however the management team was back in them days vehicles would be a lot different like 20s would get Citaros instead of Streetlites i used to like the old RBY livery the spike one it really stands out i would have created brands like Gold for Express, Silver for normal routes and Bronze for locals that are small that only go door to door plus driver training to train new drivers