(05 Oct 2017, 3:21 pm)2bagstew wrote Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
There is two 22’s going into Sunderland 1 is 25 minutes later the other 1 is on time
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Tell me about it. The one due to leave Sunderland at 13:07 has been more than 15 minutes later every day this week. After being late to pick littlun up twice, I've had to start catching the one before.
Of course the 16:42 from Durham was on time because we arrived at the station just as it was leaving, thanks to the debacle with the 6.
(05 Oct 2017, 3:56 pm)Dan wrote Or it leaves Darlington late due to it being a new driver on each departure, and they haven't got a driver to operate it (or s/he's come in late off their previous trip so are claiming their bait!) Darlington's alleged shortage of drivers certainly won't help matters, as any spare drivers will already be out on the road.We have up on waiting for an abandoned X26, the other week, because there was no driver for it. The driver waiting for the Barney bus was having a right old rant. Of course, it was races day, so there were lots of extra passengers waiting, no doubt wanting to pay full fair rather than the usual rash of concessionary passes and day tickets.
I recently attempted to travel on the final service of the day through to Peterlee from Darlington on a Saturday afternoon. The bus was dumped in Darlington near the Arriva canteen, blinded up for 'X21 Peterlee' and duty board in the window of the bus confirmed it was the one I was waiting for.
I waited for 15 minutes until the service's scheduled departure before deciding to press the bell down at the Arriva shop. After querying whether the service was going to operate (given that it was the last journey of the day operating to Peterlee), the bloke who opened the door didn't know and said he'd check to see if they could find a driver. About 5 minutes later, someone else came out and said that it would run. About 5 minutes after that, the driver eventually came (though didn't bother to check if anyone was waiting at the stand - assuming that everyone who was waiting had walked down to the shop where the bus was parked!)
Kudos to the driver - despite leaving 25 minutes late, he got into Peterlee around 10 minutes late so made up about 15 minutes. The journey was, er.. fun.. to say the least!