(15 Mar 2022, 11:29 am)Ambassador wrote X66 Supershuttle was branded from the early 90s with the Optare Deltas and then the later DAFs - I have in my mind that the Leyland Nationals were in X66 livery too but they may not have been - I couldn't find a pic of one.

I guess there was also Superliner in the early 90s and Expresslink in the late 80s (you could argue they are the 'parents' of what is now X-Lines)

As they are technically owned by Go Ahead - the Low Fell Coaches 'Cross Tyne' service pre-dated most of GNE's efforts

The Nationals before the DAFs were indeed in the X66 Supershuttle livery.  Very smart it was as well.  They also repainted the skirt green and used them as Garden Festival Shuttles for the duration of that.  Sticking with the Metrocentre, there was also the MetroCentre Minis.

---

(14 Mar 2022, 11:21 pm)Wybus wrote Another question - during the first part of the route branding era, so around 2006-2010, was there actually a ‘current’ corporate /standard livery for GNE, i.e one that buses were actively still being repainted into or was it just a case of the previous red/blue livery sticking around on non repainted buses.

I’m talking before they introduced the overall red ‘Northern’ livery for spare buses

Not sure if there was an official strategy, as it were, but from memory it seemed like they painted bus by route/brand out of the red/blue/yellow livery into whatever the new brand was.  Spare vehicles were painted white, with most gaining overall adverts for GNE tickets, fares etc.

'Northern' was brought in a bit later as a residual brand for vehicles on services that didn't receive 'proper' brands.