(Yesterday, 4:46 pm)Storx wrote Not surprised, all this investment has done nothing at all to sort out the issues at Ashington. After going round the circles, basically the end result is 6x B9TL's which are not reliable seemingly replacing 6x Pulsar's which are reliable and absolutely nothing else.
Arguably the depot is in a worse position.
Mind it seems like they've dragged 7403 out now to sort that board but 7554 has decided it's had enough (again) on the 57 instead and now the X22 is missing a board ironically which is the 6pm out of Newcastle
The 14/64/15-plate E400s are in a shocking state, and if we're honest have been neglected since about 2021. Obviously the common theme here is that they (mostly) have been based out of Ashington depot, whereas the DB300s (replying to later posts in this too) have all been Blyth based.
The only 2 E400s which seem dependable are 7524/5, which were decent at Ashington and have been at Blyth since Jesmond closed. The entire 64-plate batch have been ruined, 7553 is barely able to do anything beyond a 1 (got used as a replacement on an X18 today which went as expected), and 7554 is barely able to leave the depot.
I'd counter that the Pulsars are reliable now, they have gone through horrific spells at Ashington too. Again though, the question there is whether that is due to engineering or age of the buses.
The B9s are fine at Ashington if used on the 35 as they should be. The issue, as you point out, is that the bean counters have taken away the rest of the decent stock so you've only got 19 buses for 23 X18/20 duties. They've then got, as far as I can tell, 23 saloons for 12 booked saloon duties. So some of those will always end up on decker work, but actually in reality even more will because of how bad those E400s are and so they're instead being used on the 1/57. Truly awful fleet planning, and whoever allowed the 17/72-plates to leave the region without suitable replacement needs put on a PIP.