(13 Aug 2022, 8:22 pm)peter wrote Not sure if it's been hypothesised yet but I have a sneaking suspicion the 6 and 12 will be moving to Consett from September.I think we will see a few services moving depots, especially at Washington there isn't enough Room, GNE just park all their services on the street and have done for years, however with the 34/CLS Routes if they go to Washington something will have to give, it could be the X1 or 4.
I had the idea initially as most of the services registered in that initial batch of September changes were ones that are moving depots. Also because Lanchester would not be that far away from Consett for driver change overs.
Then there's been a couple of things on BusTimes that seem to suggest it. Firstly all the Streetlites allocated to Consett have their depot shown as '6 and 12' rather than CT or Consett, which seems odd, although I know it's not the most trustworthy of websites, someone could be hinting at something.
Secondly on Wednesday, 8294 did a little jaunt from Chester depot, it ran to Lanchester then followed the route of the 6 to Newcastle and then the route of the 12 to Winlaton before heading back via the 12 and 6 route to Lanchester and back to Chester. As I'm assuming relatively few of the Chester drivers would wanna move to Riverside, perhaps the 6 and 12 are moving to Consett which the ex-Chester drivers will now run, with Riverside drivers being trained up on the 21.
Either could make sense, you split the 2/2A, so Sunderland to Washington and X1 drivers do a switch over with the 2/2A & 39B which is 5 buses an hour which is what the X1 should be going back to, or the 4 which is 4 buses per hour which would make change overs much easier.