(19 Mar 2014, 5:14 am)ADLEnviro wrote Stagecoach's reserve fleet was only built up to the size it was due to the Olympic contract. We've seen a massive reduction since then and this reduction will be ongoing over the next year. It's handy to have an operational reserve fleet, look back to the Carlisle floods to see this, but it is not needed. Now its just a case of hang onto as many as you can for as long as you can, Perth catches up eventually though.

Out of interest as I don't follow company fleet allocations ect, how many vehicles do Go North East keep as operational reserve vehicles?

Excluding each depot's spare vehicles which overall is approximately 20%, I'd assume these 'operational reserve vehicles' are the float vehicles which citaro5284 mentioned a few days ago in regards to B10BLE 4845. I don't think there are any documents on the public domain which reveal a specific number to enthusiasts, but I'd imagine single figures...

I hadn't realised Stagecoach used a similar system, hence my assumption that 33101/492 were a part of South Shields' allocated spare percentage. This often decreases when new vehicles arrive due to greater reliability inflicted by the newer vehicles, hence the overall assumption on this site and others that those two vehicles would be replaced when withdrawn.