(29 Oct 2025, 10:34 pm)solsburian wrote The DB300 have been absolute workhorses and have aged far more gracefully than their awful Scania ELC Cityzen predecessors too. We have agreed before, but I’ll re-iterate, Blyth probably should be mostly allocated deckers for all their services apart from the 553. As a rule of thumb, any Northumbria service starting or ending at Newcastle Haymarket should be a decker period IMHO.

Given the stop/start nature of the 306/308, those services should be the next candidate for EV deckers given their excellent acceleration.

For Ashington’s longer distance routes in a fantasy world I would re-introduce coaches on them, which would make it more attractive for tourists with luggage to boot. At the very best the busses used on the X15-X18 should have high backed seating as may customers will be on them for a while.

Yeah can't disagree with the top bit if I had to be honest.

Agreed with the coaches aswell, I always think there should be a proper North Northumberland express personally and have it hourly with the X15/X18 Northern bits on it so those travelling further get more luxury.

You'd probably have to make it completely non stop between Morpeth and Newcastle though and ideally Morpeth and Alnwick (but that would need extra services). 

A coach from Seahouses to Newcastle etc would be popular imo and the X18 double back is stupid regardless.