(24 Jan 2026, 11:53 am)Storx wrote It's only an issue if the buses are actually meant to be on those routes though? The buses were purchased for the X21/X22 and there's been nothing else sent to Ashington, bar a whole load of Pulsar's which are not appropiate, to replace them off there.
Surely the discussion should be, we don't have enough deckers for the X14/X15/X18 and are having to take allocations off the X21/X22 which in turn means we are having overcrowding issues with saloons on peak runs? Therefore it's unreliable saloons leaving, especially the 4 which were traded for the E400MMC's which were sent to Whitby which arguably led to the shortages in the first place...
Exactly. Purchased for the X21/22, and with new deckers arriving they definitely shouldn't be straying from there? From memory the Pulsars also can't do the mileage of a couple of the boards, yet they're happy to keep those (make that make sense). It's such a non-issue, that it screams someone has made a bad decision and they're desperate to try and cover their back. To show how irrelevant it is, check 7547 on 21 January, 7549 on 17 January, 7543 on 6 January - all three comfortably finished X18 midnights. I can't find any example over the past few weeks where a 17-plate has been swapped off an X18 midnight in the evening either - indicating both that they are trusted to finish them, and that the 72-plates are generally allocated anyway...
The situation at Ashington is increasingly bad. There were multiple hour long gaps in the X21, X22, and 35 today as two consecutive boards were dropped on each service - AGAIN. Clear that the supervisors aren't getting monitored as they should be by management, if I was that incompetent at my job I'd expect to be on a PIP or out of the door. They're back to using clapped out Pulsars on express work again, which is having the expected (to anyone with half a brain cell) consequences. 1512 failed on an X20 this morning, 1404 was hauled off an X18 on Saturday and failed twice today on the 35, 1462 made it to Longframlington and back today before failing (after earlier failing on an X21). They're completely inappropriate for the work they're being used on, and nothing is being done to remedy the situation.
I can almost see the press release now. They'll reduce frequencies citing lower passenger numbers, entirely because they aren't running half of the services, and the death spiral will continue - rather than seeing if passenger numbers return to where they were when they actually had functional vehicles. They seem to have no appreciation that franchising could, and should, wipe every single one of them out of a job - along with GNE it would be a disgrace if they held onto the current monopoly that they have if they don't quickly make improvements.
People were very vocal on here in recent months when engineering staff were replaced, it is interesting how silent they now are given the situation is getting significantly worse on a daily basis. New engineering manager clearly doesn't know what he is doing, local management clearly have no contingency plan, and once again the 'armchair experts' on here were correct in their criticism.
(24 Jan 2026, 10:18 am)Shrek wrote Interesting when you point these things out. Maybe shows there is more logic in their plans than we all know, and there are some necessities in the moves they're making which we aren't privy to the information on.
It would be interesting if it was having literally any impact on operations. By the time they'd be anywhere close to being out of fuel, which from memory was close to the end of a double Berwick X15 board, it was always far enough into the evening that buses were readily available at Morpeth or Alnwick to swap onto them. I'd also point out here that the Volvo Olympians that worked the Alnwick routes for years had the same 'issue' - maybe operational staff were less lazy back then...
Realistically they should be allocated to the X21/22 anyway, as pointed out by Storx, so it's a complete non-issue.
Truthfully I don't think they've got a clue what they're doing, as if this was such a huge problem why has it not been addressed at any point since they were new 9 years ago? They're past the halfway point in their life now, they should be settling onto less demanding work (like the X21/22...) anyway with new stock being delivered.