(01 Apr 2021, 6:56 pm)ifm001 wrote Going back to my suggestion of service operating from Whitley Bay - North Shields - Jarrow - Washington Galleries - Beamish.  I've looked at existing service times and it is certainly doable.

Whitley Bay to North Shields via 306 or similar is 20 minutes
North Shields to Jarrow via 319 or similar is 12 minutes
Jarrow to White Mare Pool journey time 6 minutes
White Mare Pool to Washington Galleries via 960 route is 9 minutes.
Washington Galleries to Beamish is 17 minutes 

Total journey time 64 minutes

Running light back to Whitley Bay can be done in less than 1 hour and could result in 3 journeys each direction.

Now that is doable, and I believe a fair few of prospective tourist passengers from North of the river.

You'd have to be running that first journey very early or the last one very late to make it work though. I might be making it up, I certainly cant find any mention on their website at present, but I'm sure Beamish had a last entry of around 2pm?

Similarly for the return, lets say you start running them back at 2pm, the last journey from Beamish is going to get hit with peak time traffic on its dead run from Whitley Bay.

It's certainly something that would be doable with resources, but I'd imagine this year they'll be wanting to do these special services as low cost as possible and something like a Whitley Bay - Beamish route would likely need at least a couple of drivers and realistically more than one bus. The current timetable would allow for an adequate driver break between 12:34 and 14:00 (assuming they will return to depot for break facilities), and is well within the UK domestic driving hours, so could be done solo.