Greater Manchester Tenders

[Manc93]

RE: Greater Manchester Tenders
I always thought the reason the Warrington 5 was diverted away from Dunham Massey was due to parked cars around the village however I am not familiar with the area. They did upgrade vehicles to new Enviro200MMCs a while back so that is probably when the route was changed.

Why dont tfgm just contract the whole day and evening service instead of splitting it up? Maybe due to costs but it just makes a lot of sense, and espically to passengers too for consistancy. Obviously on commercial daytime services this can't happen but if the whole service is tendered.

Altrincham always seems like a harder area to get tenders for. Maybe as there are not many depots nearby. I know Arriva seem to be the nearest but I dont think they have any solos anymore, and although can source nationally, it looks like the only tenders they have been awarded use longer vehicles they use on all other services anyway.
Stagecoach Sharston dont have any Solos and running Altrincham locals from Stockport although done previously seems uneconomical. Again theres only a few there now for the Cheadle 328 service with 2 solos in the yard being used for parts to keep the others going anyway. Even Little Gem are based in Eccles which is a lot of dead mileage each day, and crew changeovers also.

The X5 used to be a well used service under Stagecoach, alas once the tender passed I think to MCT it declined, and then passed to Diamond and it went to a peaks only service around that point.