(31 Jan 2022, 5:23 pm)Adrian wrote On coordination: I'm not sure what the thinking would be behind aligning the eastbound timetable only between Heddon-Newcastle. I'd say it's more of a coincidence than anything that it's aligned, and that the reason it's not aligned out of Hexham is to reduce the amount of waste in the duties. That of course doesn't help the customer.

It's impossible to co-ordinate the 684/685 completely: the 684 has an end-to-end journey time of 1hr 8m, whereas the 685 has an end-to-end journey time of 51m.

To co-ordinate the times from Hexham, you'd then have an uneven spread of departures out of Newcastle. The latter is more likely to cause an issue as departures in Eldon Square are governed by strict guidelines to avoid stand clashes.

So effectively the timetable is co-ordinated both east and westbound between Heddon-on-the-Wall and Newcastle, but if you just miss a 685, customers have the option of catching the 684 half an hour later, but they'll only arrive into Hexham 13 minutes earlier than the 685 which follows half an hour afterwards.

The X84/X85 have never been co-ordinated well either and it's because the X84 (and now 684) was always the slower of the two.