(31 Jul 2025, 9:32 pm)Storx wrote Must admit I've noticed this, with 3051 in particular, as it's been pulled pretty much daily

But is it better to have no service, at all, or attempt to get something running? I know which camp I'd be in. I've noticed 7625 was at Ashington today, bailing them out though. Not sure it's fair to blame Ashington when they've inherited a fleet of 10+ reject Pulsar's from other depots considering they had none in frontline service until recently. All down to lack of investment really, and is it really surprise it's starting to catch up now?

I’d absolutely argue that sending a bus out knowing that it’s likely not going to make it is worse than not sending it at all. All you’re doing then is, at best, annoying passengers and other road users - and at worst doing that AND making the problem worse (leading to bigger issues down the line). If something has an issue with overheating due to a coolant leak, for example, then the more you run that engine under those conditions the more likely it is to suffer damage. I imagine in lots of instances they’ll also need to use Alpha, which is obviously a further cost - which ultimately will fall on the passenger to cover. 

They have had Pulsars in service for well over 3 years now, and to be fair the Pulsars generally aren’t the problem. I think 1540 is the only one which is off at the moment (for more than a day or two anyway), and I heard that was accident damage. 1404, which is 16 now, happily does Kelso X16 duties and completed an X18 board the other week without issue. Most of the others are similar in fairness, even the ex-NW ones seem to handle the express work fine. 

I do believe that their engineering is an issue, however I also think they’re hamstrung by the fleet they have and the routes they operate. I believe that out of the full NE operation they operate the most buses on an evening, and every single route they operate has at least some NSL running. During the day over 40 of their buses are allocated to express routes which have varying levels of dual carriageway blasts. They’ve got about 20 buses out there past 10pm every night, and over half of them are on express work. Contrast that with the significant amount of town/city work other depots, such as Durham and Darlington, have - as well as the reduced evening vehicle requirement at those depots. Ashington’s evening workload has increased recently, with the X15s in particular, as has their express daytime work with the X30, which brings us onto the next problem - the removal of deckers. 

You’re putting all of this stress, through high mileage and high speed running, onto an increasingly old and decreasing pool of deckers. Though several (7528/29/30/31/32) older E400s have performed well over the past week or so on various X14/8/20 boards, they’re not really cut out for that any more. Meaning the 17-plates and reduced pool of 72-plates are getting slammed daily, with expected results. Yes, the Pulsars sent to replace the 4 X93 72-plates perform well, but they aren’t going to be allocated to the same work which the 72-plates could be - which just increases the stress on those which remain. Its why the decision to remove 7578-81, despite the need for them on the X93, was a huge negative for Ashington - it massively reduced operational resilience and flexibility, while increasing the workload for already stressed assets.