(10 hours ago)Busadvocate wrote Ah, had forgotten 768. It was a DCC contract. Have found a 2001 timetable, when it was a mixture of Stanley Travel and Arriva. But in the rather fine DCC timetable book for summer 1986, there was no Durham service, and hadn't been fro some time. Just the Fulton's then Watson's 712 to Stanley (hourly all day M-Sat and hourly from late Sun AM). In summer 1986 Burnhope also had a Tues and Fri Lanchester - Chester le Street bus, one each way, seemingly a joint United/ Northern operation (did each do one joureny?). CleSt market was a big thing then, hard to imagine now.

The way the current Lanchester - Stanley contract with GNE was tendered as a freestanding service but operates as an extension of the (mainly) commercial service 6. That is a mixed blessing, IMO. It gives a through service to Metrocentre and Ncle (tho a long way round) but any traffic etc delays there affect the service. And GNE has had its share of big bus reliability issues in modern times, too. A frestanding, rock-solid, local service with connections into direct services at Stanley probably better (assuming appropriate fares and timetabling, too).

Not sure I agree there, unless it was every 20 minutes or so.

An hourly service is completely unusable in terms of connecting, because the same issues with the 6 still affect you. The only difference is instead of the bus being 10 minutes late, you're now standing around for 50 minutes in Stanley because you missed your connection.

I know which I'd rather have. Hub and spoke only works if both services are extremely frequent, 15 minute+ imo.