(23 Jun 2014, 7:26 am)ifm001 wrote It eas def before that date as I finished working in sunderland in 1995 so the seaburn service must have been introduced year or so before then. And then altered to go to silksworth instead as the seaburn route didn't carry many between seaburn and cleadon/boldon
I don't know whether service X97 started before April 1995, but there was no such service in May 1994. It could, of course, have been introduced in the interim period but it means that the service between Seaburn and Newcastle lasted a matter of months before it was radically altered.
It certainly didn't go to Seaburn in 1995 as this map, dated October 1995, shows service X97 operating between Silksworth and Newcastle.