The Alnmouth (for Alnwick) Late Afternoon Timetable Gap

A recent social media post on the Aln, Blyth, and Tyne Railway (Northumberland Line & Beyond) Facebook group by member L.M. highlighted a 2hr 34min gap in the Newcastle bound timetable for midweek departures.

A link to the excellent Realtime Trains website, showing services between Alnmouth and Newcastle only shows this really well, with the Transpennie Express departure at 15:26 towards Newcastle being followed by the LNER operated 18:00, leading to the ‘Alnmouth Gap’ between the two of 2.5hrs.

This is taken from the timetable information on the website for 23.1.25.

This is in contrast to the pretty good service over the rest services during the rest of the day, with the full departures in the same direction occuring at 06:22, 06:50, 06:57, 07:08, 07:20, 08:10, 09:00, 10:09, 10:47, 11:00, 12:10, 13:01, 14:09, 15:00, 15:06, 15:26, 18:00, 18:09, 18:47, 19:27, 19:43, 20:26, 20:40, 21:12, and finally the 22:14.

When the station generally sees at least one train per hour, this 2.5hr gap seems outwardly bizarre, especially when many passenger services pass through the station during that period of time.

Services that could potentially infill the gap could be the trains presently passing through at 15:33, 16:00, 16:10½, 16:32½, 16:58, 17:06½, 17:13½, and finally the 17:31½.

Of these, potentially the 16:00 and 16:58 would fit well to fill the service gap, being just under an hour apart, and well spaced after the 15:26, and before the 18:00 departures respectively.

Both of these trains are operated by LNER, an operator already long under the auspices of the DfT, so hopefully the December 2025 timetable alterations could resolve this gap in the services at Alnmouth, as well as addressing the potential loss of the popular morning service.

These ‘late afternoon’ departures towards Newcastle would likely be well patronised; I personally have caught the 18:00 fairly frequently in the past, but an earlier service would have been desirable.

Hopefully this change might be incorporated into the December 2025 timetable changes, and this large service gap will be closed.