(20 Jan 2021, 10:21 pm)deanmachine wrote Judging how easy something is to read when photos taken on a day like today is pretty funny. The livery looks fine, in person, the lettering is easy enough to read.
Only criticism is the fact that it's still an orange double decker, so doesn't stand out immediately as being that different to the Fab 56.
Yes, agreed. A photo will always be different to how it actually looks in reality too.
I think the only tricky thing with moving away from it being orange is that the 56 has always been orange. That's not to say it always has to remain orange going forward, but I think there has to be a pretty compelling case to move away from it. In this instance I'm not sure what that case would be. Reliability on service 56 is very good, so there's no need to move away from the colour to try and change the perception that it's a different/newer bus.
In a normal world, I think the orange double-decker will be perceived on Old Durham Road as being the bus that stops. Despite being some 10 months into the pandemic where express services have began to serve all stops on their route, I still don't think many people hail down an X1, as the perception was always that the red buses, now gold, don't stop.