(10 Feb 2023, 3:35 pm)Washingtonian wrote You make some very fair and valid comments there. Never realised the place is full of asbestos to be honest. Whether the building is preserved or pulled down I would imagine it will cost a lot to remove it either way.
The main point of my post was to say it seems such a shame that the company's first ever depot, and ultimately where the company started being torn down and forgotten about.
I wonder if preservation groups in the area would be interested in coming together and renting the building from Go North East. There's loads of room to store the vehicles, and plenty of stores, workshop space and pits to work on the buses. They could have open days, fundraising days and guided tours around the site to help with the upkeep and costs to run the place. As far as I'm aware there isn't any transport museum in the North East. As I said earlier I can't see this happening but I feel something needs to be done to commemorate what is ultimately a historic building.
That's not a bad shout that. If say Lidl did buy the site to build a supermarket they might well do this as they preserved a chimney/tower at the site of the store in Swalwell. I reckon they could fit a store on there although I think the main issue would be traffic.
It (or part of it) seems ripe for Beamish to be honest.
Maybe some of the the more modern extensions less so, but I reckon it would fit in nicely and as well as being able to display exhibits, potentially useful for storage too.