(31 Jul 2025, 11:03 pm)Jimmi wrote It seems to be the standard for many companies nowadays, just a series of quick fixes to get things back out on the road ASAP. Much of Arriva’s fleet are really starting to show their age now, whilst some have been given a spruce up in appearance, you can't help but feel how tired much of the fleet is now.

I found much of the Chiltern fleet I saw at Marylebone yesterday looking rather shabby, including the Class 165 I got to Wembley Stadium, so pleased I didn't have to attempt to use the transport network there last night, didn't look too bad to me but I only saw from the outside looking in really which was mostly just stopping people from walking over the bridge at Wembley Stadium Station.

Aye it was the bridge which was the problem, I'm sure they had the majority of the staff stopping people on the bridge and no-one managing the queue line which didn't really exist (just had half the bridge merging into a half a stairwell, with obvious results). Not sure what happened as last time we used it, they used to have a long cattlepen queue line and it worked well to be fair.

Small world, assuming both were at Oasis on Wednesday mind, seems like half the North East was there.

(31 Jul 2025, 11:06 pm)PH - BQA wrote 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.

Aye don't agree at all about the fleet issues, you're right - it's why badly they need better investment really as like you said the Whitby move just caused issues - and the Pulsar's were inappropiate vehicles anyway since it's deckers Ashington needs not more singles. I've noticed that the cancellations are creeping in on the X22 again in recent weeks aswell.

Mind only thing I can say is, if you didn't want to have buses out with problems, would there be anything left? If there's a 50/50 chance they'll die there's always some who aren't dying. Can't remember the fleet number, but one of the Pulsar's I got the other day sounded absolutely terrible and it wasn't one of those on the list as it was one of the 1537-43 which probably shouldn't be running and it was packed as it was doing 2 buses since the one in front wasn't running, no doubt a breakdown aswell.

Not sure what the answer is as all 3 operators in the area seem to having similar issues at Riverside, Slatyford and Ashington - in particular. The Slatyford ones are just going more unnoticed as they appear to have a ridiculous number of spares in recent weeks which I'm not sure is the answer either.