(14 Feb 2016, 6:32 pm)upt50k wrote On the subject of route branding Arriva have used it in the past on the 's' reg darts and prestiges and later on the Darlington Town Network e.g. Firthmoor Flyer and so should have known better when Sapphire and Max were introduced that there would be interworking and every chance of buses being on the incorrect services.I agree that there was scope to promote the up market benefits of the upgraded buses but surely promoting them as Sparkle or Quick Links would have been far enough to go and a better bus off service could be classed as a bonus and the buses being only generic they could be swopped as necessary.Destinations could be used as a route branding tool

Thing with Sapphire and MAX interworking is when the 7 went Sapphire they stopped it interworking with the 5A on evenings and Sundays with the 7 becoming standalone on a night on a more tight but achievable timetable and on Sundays it just did driver shuttles to/from Faverdale depot, but as part of fairly recent service changes in order to save resources it seemed the 7 started interworking with the 19 and now we have Frequenta's appearing on non town work on Sundays making things look stupid as well. The timetable and allocations of the 19 has changed so much since Arriva started operating the 19 in 2012 I'm surprised that some of the passengers can keep up, dare bet it'll change again soon. Oh God the previous Darlington Town brand was a farce as well, every morning the 19 that ran to/from Aycliffe (before Scarlet Band took over the service) would be operated by a service 11 branded bus (or sometimes a service 2 bus) and everytime something broke down on a out of town route they would take a town bus off and put it on the non town route as a replacement, frequently saw Firth Moor Flyers on the 21 and X66. Now the same is happening with Frequenta, think instead of generic Frequenta's they should have left them in the standard livery, so at least they wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb on the likes of the Sunday 8's or as a breakdown replacement.