(16 Mar 2023, 8:29 am)EastCoastMXZ1751 wrote Think they should never have sent those MMCs to Darlington and told that complaining MP to focus on their job and arriva focus on running a bus service rather than Bowing down to them and getting shot of perfectly adequate new buses from NorthumbriaThat's kinda a matter for an MP to raise as part of their job tbh, but anyway... part of the problem was we also had unreliable Solo's (mainly the 08/58 plate examples) at Darlington which were causing issues to the services here (on top of the driver shortages leading to cancellations).
Today's the 57s are made up of 2 solos and 2 pulsars. Yesterday was 2 solos an enviro and a pulsar on, the enviro, 7532 for those wondering, replaced the notoriously unreliable 2853 which expired just shy of 20 minutes into the first 57 of the day at hartford bridge.
In an ideal world, Ashington should've kept their examples for the 57/57A at the very least with the remaining examples going to Darlington owing to no longer really being required on other mini/midi routes owing to service withdrawals and changes to allocation/interworking patterns but naturally with political pressure around Darlington and stuff like type standardisation, it was inevitable what was gonna happen.