(4 hours ago)PH - BQA wrote The oldest decker Ashington have (excluding the sheds they have on loan from Blyth) is 12 years old. There's absolutely no reason they should be unreliable as they are, the reason for the unreliability is poor maintenance and incompetent fleet planning.
Plenty of other companies use older vehicles (E400s, in many cases) on far more intense work than the X21/22, yet things like 7530 and 7554 can't even complete a day on there.
Put it this way, 7514-7 were widely considered to be dogs by the end of their time at Ashington. They were 13 years old and still, just about, putting in 6 days a week on Alnwick services by the time the 72-plate batch of MMCs replaced them. Compare them to how 7526-33 and 7553/4 are now, there has clearly been a significant reduction in competence at that depot over recent years. 7526-33 and 7553/4 have been shocking for about 3 years now, some of them with significant spells of not even being in service let alone sent to Alnwick/Berwick every day, and are all still younger than the 09-plates were when they left.
Too much crap at the depot imo, like realistically you've got the 11 E400's, 6 B9TL's, 6 Pulsars, and the Solo SR which are just unreliable. There's just not enough time to fix everything so it means stuff which shouldn't be out is going out.
What's the real alternative at the depot level just drop the boards?
Blyth, Durham, Darlington and Redcar (now gone obviously) are much the same really.
The E400MMC's that went to Yorkshire should've been the solution to this mess, even if it was temporary to deal with the E400's, and give them a proper overhaul but imo 7601-15 should've been withdrawn instead; they're arguably the oldest vehicles in the whole Arriva fleet now.