(08 Mar 2024, 11:36 pm)mb134 wrote Not sure how accidents, including a car driving head on into a bus, mean that problems are "creeping in". Ultimately they can only carry a certain percentage of spares and, while I've been critical of their engineering in the past, it's very clear that the only reason Ashington appear to have missed runs to due a lack of a bus is due to an accident. 

Equally, what's wrong with them taking on contracts and using older stock? All of the buses allocated to recent contract wins (434, 777) have completed their duties today as far as I can tell?

I never mentioned engineering, more issues of vehicle shortages, in general.

The 434/57/57A is one of the biggest problems at Ashington as there's not enough minibuses so it's taking saloons and deckers which is leaving them short. I'm not even sure what's meant to be running the 57/57A because nothing came up for the Bedlington extension and 2601-3 are totally inadequate.

Blyth's the bigger problem though since they gained the 43/44/45/306 work and got some totally inappropiate Pulsar's capacity wise and some Enviro's which urgently need to be on some easy route not what they are on - ironically buses that Redcar destroyed (as usual). They're very lucky imo that the 15 year old DB300's are little work horses or they've got a good engineering team who look after them as they've not really had the easiest of lives.