New engineering management still not sorting the basics at Ashington.

I saw 1462 expired in Newcastle around 1550, after not making run out this morning. Once again, given their track record, you’d assume whatever issue it had wasn’t properly fixed.

7548, which broke down on the 434 on Tuesday and didn’t appear yesterday, broke down on the X14 tonight on the last run.

1393, which didn’t make runout yesterday morning, was sent for this mornings Wooler and broke down - resulting in a once per day service running 90 minutes late.

1538, which failed on the X18 yesterday, failed to make runout this morning and then failed to complete the X21 board it was put on.

Of the 17 plates, only 6 tracked today. 7548 and 7552 both expired at different points, so there are 4 fully functioning buses out of a batch of 12.

As much as the engineering isn’t getting any better, it isn’t being helped by quite frankly moronic allocations. Sending 16 year old Pulsars to do daily Wooler services while you allocate 3 year old MMCs on the 434 should be a sackable offence. The amount of Pulsars and Streetlites sent onto X18 boards recently is laughable given the known capacity issues on a few of them - 1404 did two school runs on its board today.

Things might not change “overnight” - as is the frequent response to the criticism of the inept morons running that place - but even the Titanic turned quicker than this. Seems to be no appetite from management to draft in extra vehicles - while Blyth gained 3 extra MMCs over November and December to paint a whopping 1 bus at a time (and stopped short of completing their full batch of *6* 12-plate Pulsars, once again displaying the inability of the people running this circus to see through any plan).

Hopefully the lack of action prompts the local councillor to follow up on her meeting with them, baffled that the Traffic Commissioner hasn’t been involved yet given the state of the 35.