(10 hours ago)Storx wrote Must admit the river excuse seems nonsense considering how close Riverside is to the Tyne and heck, Blyth to the sea.

Mind deep down I have a feeling the Redcar reason is the don't want to buy midibuses, so they've used it as an opportunity to displace the MMC's at Darlington down South. The Arriva midibus fleet in some places is truely horrendous, there's still 04 Plate MPD's down in Kent for example.

Terrible for the North East now mind if that does happens as it doesn't solve the old fleet issues up here at all but they've done it at Gillingham and they've done it at Leicester now.

Yeah crazy - an Arriva Stockton driver came up from Kent and was over the moon with the fleet here, everyone was like really?!