(26 Jun 2017, 8:56 am)Coppercap40 wrote The departures from Newcastle are unchanged X85 +10,  X84 +10, and Arriva 685 at +45,  return times from Hexham are x85 +40, Arriva 685 +42,  X84  +55,  totally unbalanced

The 685 (85) used to leave Hexham for Newcastle at around twenty past the hour before the changes when it became Cross Pennine branded, so all three services were in the region of being about 20 minutes apart of departing Hexham for Newcastle but sadly since those changes, it's knocked that to hell. If you did some creative work with the timetables, you could have had something like this to space them apart a bit more:

Newcastle: X84 - 05, X85 - 35, 685 - 45
Hexham: X85 - 05, X84 - 20, 685 - 42

Sadly of course though, you have two operators competing on the same corridor and it seems the best thing to do is to time your service about 5 minutes in front of the competing operators service, that's not a direct dig at GNE, Arriva did the same thing by introducing the X1 when the OK1 started and it happens elsewhere as well, such as Transdev and ConnexionsBuses doing it with services in Harrogate for example.