(22 Oct 2023, 4:08 pm)L469 YVK wrote They were awful on Arriva's 308 though with the slip roads on the Coast Road! Arriva ended up increasing the PVR to 10x but 7801-10 ended up moving to West Yorkshire not long after!
As for Tyne Valley Ten B9TLs being off the road, would it not be better having a "Sunday" allocation consisting of Angel StreetDecks and XLines B5TL's to conserve the B9TLs?
Wonder when GNE eventually receive EV's for the 21, whether the StreetDecks will end up on the Tyne Valley Ten, or they will end up on the 56 or 307 & 309 with less leggy B9TLs making up the numbers on the Tyne Valley Ten.
Bearing in mind, 6071-83 have been worked hard as the Tyne Valley Ten didn't really have much 'cover' for the full PVR until 2017 and even then, 6043-48 weren't the most reliable after being hammered up and down the A19 for 5 years!
Quite a testament to older vehicle build quality and reliabilty given ex-Arriva 7370-77 did the 602 for 6 years then pretty much spent the rest of their next 10-11 years on the Ashington & Alnwick 'X' routes bar short stints at Blyth & Jesmond.
I wonder whether part of the problem with buses off road for lengthier periods of time is down to closing depots and the amount of staff and bays to do PSV prep nowadays. Youve got to consider that without chester they now have to do whatever PSV numbers they already struggled to do a Riverside + what used to be done at chester for service and NatEx as well, unless they're contracting out the NatEx PSV work to a third party.
I've said it before that the Cobalt and Coast B9s have had very much a charmed life compared to most of the other fleets of B9s, the mileage is considerably lower. The B9s as a rule are pretty solid, ABS, NOX, and Air Pressure sensors, and ramp switches used to be most of the simple issues, gearboxes in later life, Eminox conversion just caused grief with them - in fact now I come to think of it, most buses I drove that had eminox conversions had recurrent derate issues - maybe GNE backed the wrong horse with Eminox.
A lot of the TVT fleet ended up being hammered on the X9/X10s when their B9s and B5s were failing - moreso once the tacho restriction was removed for the service.