On the note of not turning buses back, I know the controllers here are under pressure to reduce dead mileage as much as possible (I assume the GNE ones would be under much more pressure) - it's a balancing act of is the company going to lose more money running it x minutes late then it would if the bus was turned. You'll often only see buses turned if they're due a driver changeover, and even then it's only if the bus is significantly late. Routes like the X24 they'll just send the relief driver out in another bus (if one is available) and send the late running one (if it's irrecoverably late) back to the depot at the end of that driver's last trip.

Thankfully with us though, 3 buses running together is very rare and generally only happens if a bus isn't running for whatever reason. I was in a convoy of 3x 20s recently (thankfully I was the on time one) and tbh it was quite embarassing. Think the 10-minute one eventually made its time up and the 20 minute one was turned (saw it leave the town not in service and then next saw it turning right onto Hylton Road at the hospital). For context, it was around school kicky out time and there were at least 2 sets of horrendous temporary lights on Hylton Road, so it's not much of a surprise delays occured.