On the 31st October 2024, myself as dad (writing), mum (Mrs N.C.L), and two under ten’s, travelled from home to York for the day.
Whilst the Northumberland Coast Loop campaign is mostly focussed on the route via Blyth, Northumberland, it is also here to advocate for better services in Northumberland more generally too, especially in North Northumberland (between Pegswood and Berwick), where for destinations beyond Newcastle, the existing East Coast Main Line via Cramlington (and possibly enhanced in future by the Morpeth Diversion) is the more optimal route in most cases.
Booking the Trains
Tickets were booked through the LNER app on the 28th October, meaning it was quite short-notice before travel. With a Family and Friends Railcard, the price for two adults and two children came to £119 return, one of the cheaper fares available at the time.
A short car trip got us all to Alnmouth, with a £1.50 charge for 24hrs parking at the station, with car park quite well filled by that point. Ideally, I’d have preferred to use the bus, but integration between buses and rail at Alnmouth is fairly poor, meaning a quite excessive additional time is added if you use buses to link to the station. Hopefully this can change if/when the Aln Valley Railway also reaches Alnmouth, as proposals have long stood for a shuttle service between Lionheart and Alnmouth.
Having arrived in good time for our train, so we waited in the small but reasonably comfortable waiting room, until our trip towards York on 1V56, the 10:09 from Alnmouth with CrossCountry Voyager 220033, which left Alnmouth a modest minute late (10:10), already quite well loaded, and in Coach C, had almost every seat full on departure from Newcastle, arriving in York at 11:45 (8mins late).
Aside from the fairly tiny delay, the journey was otherwise great, for a Voyager there was no noticeable odours in the cabin, or even the loo, a known problem with these trains on occasion, and the staff on board were very friendly and helpful, with plenty of information on how the service was running etc.
We then spent an enjoyable day around York, finishing off with a quick visit to the Railway Museum to be close to the station for our return trip.
While walking to the station, the LNER app informed us, rightly, that our expected train (the 16:32) was delayed, with at the worst point, it expected to leave York at 17:59. This prompted us to visit the ticket office at York, and the staff there were excellent, informing us that our ticket would be accepted on the 17:36 LNER service if we wished to travel earlier rather than on the then heavily delayed CrossCountry service.
In the end though, CrossCountry, to their great credit mananged to provide a train only minutes later than the planned, meaning a quick dash to Platform 10 from our position near the ticket office, but in the end getting us home only a few minutes later than we’d planned aboard CrossCountry Voyager 220018 on 1S47.
Summary
Being with Mrs N.C.L. and the kids, gave quite a good perspective as critical friends giving their honest feedback.
Booking:
Very easy, useful to be able to sit together and look at times/fares at home when kids were settled and calm, and payment via PayPal made it a very easy process to have tickets etc ready.
Price:
Of all the things on the whole trip, the price was probably the biggest factor of concern from Mrs N.C.L., who asked for comparison to driving (both of us can drive and have a good family car).
To drive the 234mi with a petrol car getting about 35-40mpg would be in range of £35 to £45 in fuel cost, plus York P&R, the main driver against this being the much longer journey time and the need to make regular stops for children to use toilets, compared to be able to do on ‘on the move’ with rail travel, whilst also getting there faster.
In the words of the Mrs: ‘If trains were a lot cheaper, I’d do it a lot more’. I would certainly agree with her on that, as even with a RailCard (which arguably shouldn’t be needed at all; as everyone should get an equally good price in my view), £119 is a fairly big as for a family of four, which could have been seven had fares been cheaper as another family had thoughts of joining us and were put off by the price.
Hopefully rail fare reforms can make train fares equal to, or even below driving costs to make this a non-issue going forwards.
Station & Train Experience:
Both Alnmouth and York stations were clean, tidy and pleasant to use, Alnmouth station footbridge is getting quite shabby though with rust and spalling of the concrete structure so is in need of repair or replacement soon.
Alnmouth could also probably do with a similarly sized waiting room being added to the Northbound platform, as can be seen from the photo below, a substantial number of people were waiting to head north as we made our way to the waiting room. Having easier access to toilets on the platforms would be another good improvement.
In an ideal world, this current council car park might be improved by conversion into a bus/rail interchange (by treating Alnmouth station as a transport ‘hub’ for Alnwick, Amble, and the surrounding area), which means that waiting facilities on this side could be shared by bus/rail passengers, and the present ticket office could perhaps be relocated into such a building, with the old one forming an expanded waiting room?
Canopies could also be added at Alnmouth to provide a greater level of shelter too, as from experience, Alnmouth can be a wet and windy place while awaiting a train!
Both trains were clean, comfortable and free of odours, which as stated was a known problem on Voyagers for a long time, sometimes being quite unpleasant on previous trips but CrossCountry must have changed something for the better, as Mrs N.C.L., and the kids, all with a with keen sense of smell never mentioned anything!
Journey Time, Punctuality and Reliability:
The journey time of 1hr 27/28mins in each direction with just three intermediate stops (Newcastle, Durham, and Darlington) is very good; and possibly highlights the potential of the Morpeth Diversion to improve this further, as since this train didn’t stop at Morpeth, not passing through it would improve on train journey times, improve capacity at Morpeth itself, as well as freeing up capacity for trains travelling to/from Bedlington either on the N.C.L. route or towards Newcastle via Morpeth too.
Punctuality wasn’t a major factor for us as a family on a day out, where timings were very relaxed and delays wouldn’t have mattered immensely to us, but for others on that train, delays of 8 minutes or more could have meant missed connections or being late to a meeting etc. This was something beyond the control of CrossCountry, and the indicated cause was a points failure, which happens within such complex systems.
Reliability was good on the day, even if we had to get a later train, I was confident we’d at least get home at a reasonable hour, and a big shout-out to the ticket office staff at York for being there for reassurance, as even when fairly familiar with the network, at times of disruption it can be comforting to speak to a member of staff to ensure tickets are valid on other trains etc.
Synopsis
Overall, it is a day out I would certainly like to do again, and was a good test for a longer trip we plan to do in the future with the kids, but I’d happily see the current Government reverse the decision to increase rail and bus fares, and hopefully introduce something along lines of a ‘Climate Ticket’.
Longer term, stations such as Alnmouth need investment in maintenance (such as repair/replacement of the footbridge soon), and perhaps seeing stations such as this a part of wider integrated transport, by integrating buses at near platform level with a good, shared waiting area.
The Northumberland Coast Loop 