(16 Nov 2025, 7:38 pm)Storx wrote To be fair, it's pretty much what they were designed for, similar to the B5TL's. They were blatently going for the London market but all the operators went for Hybrids instead which made both pretty much redundant from day one there.

I don't really understand why GoNorthEast bought them for what they were put on, it was pretty much obvious a tiny engine with a turbo was never going to work long term. Similar with Transdev with the Coastliner and B5TL's there aswell which are getting bailed out by a bunch of B9TL's and B7LRE's ironically.

To be fair, they weren't a bad shout IMO on the 21 and with the right care & suitable spares which was a strategy adopted by GNE in the 2010's (1x spare for every 7 or 8 purchased) - they'd be fine on the 21.

The decisions for the Castles Express and X9/X10 were both rather stupid in my opinion.

It also would've heleped if Volvo had've reverted to post Leyland acquisition strategy - and offered either a Volvo D8K or Cummins ISBe 6.7 as options for the B9TL replacement.