On the evening of Saturday 8th March 2025, a pair of Class 37 locos leading ‘The Seven Counties Rambler‘ railtour, operated by the Scottish Railway Preservation Society will depart Newcastle bound for Edinburgh, via the Northumberland Line, marking the inaugural railtour over the line since reopening for passenger trains in December 2024.
The section of route through SE Northumberland is sometimes referred to as the ‘Morpeth Avoiding Line’ (M.A.L.), which has been used on a number of occasions for diversions around the unfortunately not so infrequent accidents at Morpeth, with three major incidents between the opening of the Morpeth North Curve in 1980 and today, these occuring in 1984, 1992, and 1994, the ’84 and ’94 accidents being a result of trains having excessive speed around the notorious Morpeth Curve that resulted in derailments, which the ’92 accident was the result of a collision between two freight trains, tragically the latter resulting in the death of the locomotive driver.
Hopefully the days of incidents due to speeding or collisions in the Morpeth area has passed and with luck will never occur again, but now with anticipated opening of five new stations on the ‘Morpeth Avoiding Line’ serving many large towns and settlements along its route, perhaps the time has come to use it routinely?
The Northumberland Line to Bedlington
The train will follow the usual route of the popular Northumberland Line services, passing the as yet incomplete Northumberland Park station (due to open later in 2025), then open and proving highly popular Seaton Delaval, followed by soon to open Newsham (expected to open on Monday 17th March 2025), next is Blyth Bebside, and finally Bedlington; the latter two stations due to open on an as yet unspecified date in 2025.
Through Choppington and Hepscott
At Bedlington station, and its adjacent, logically named Bedlington Junction, the railtour will then bear left, leaving the Northumberland Line and heading along what could be called the ‘Hepscott Line’ towards its namesake village, just east of Morpeth. This will take the railtour train over the A1068 at Choppington level crossing, site of the former railway station and one being actively campaigned to be reopened.
Hepscott Junction and Morpeth North Curve
Just after passing through the village of Hepscott he train will encounter another sensibly named junction called Hepscott Junction, the left hand route heading into Morpeth station, which would then point the train back towards Newcastle. This route is more commonly used by railtours to ‘turn’ the train around when it has approached Newcastle from the south, and by using the ‘balloon loop’ formed by a Newcastle – Bedlington – Morpeth – Newcastle route, allows loco hauled trains to be turned without uncoupling locomotives.
However, The Rambler is bound for Scotland, so at Hepscott Junction it will take the lesser used and less well known right hand branch; the 1980 opened Morpeth North Curve, taking the train around the north east edge of Coopies Lane industrial estate. This route rejoins the East Coast Main Line (ECML) at Morpeth North Junction, with the railtour then shortly afterwards crossing Pegswood Viaduct over the River Wansbeck, passing through Pegswood Station and making its way along the ECML through major stations such as Alnmouth and Berwick, before crossing the Scottish Border at Marshall Meadows and entering Scotland in the late evening, bound for Edinburgh and Linlithgow, where the service terminates.
Regular Service Proposal
The key object of this campaign is to see the above route used routinely for passenger services, being a mix of:
Local Rail Service (all stations between Newcastle and Alnmouth/Berwick via Bedlington).
Semi-fast Rail Service (some stations between Newcastle and Edinburgh via Bedlington), with options to extend the route onwards beyond Newcastle headed east towards Sunderland and the Durham Coast, south towards Durham, York and more, or west toward Carlisle. From Edinburgh, options could be taken for destinations further into Scotland.
The case for such services via the M.A.L. is that towns such as Blyth, Bedlington and even Cramlington currently rely on connections via Morpeth, a much smaller town that is far more distant than stations on the Northumberland Line, particularly when compared to Blyth Bebside, which is easily reached from a wide catchment area by rail (Northumberland Line services from Ashington, and future proposed expansions to Woodborn and Newbiggin pass through this station already), with easy connections also possible by bus, road and by active travel routes too.
Bringing long distance rail services via this route would bring trains closer to the population centres that the trains would serve, rather than the less than ideal awkwardness of travelling to Morpeth to then catch onward services.
The above image of TPE unit 802213 shows the type of train that might ideally be suited to a semi-fast operation via Bedlington, with a five car unit potentially able to stop in the relatively short platforms of the new Northumberland Line stations, and these trains being bi-modes; having electric capability on the ECML, but diesel/battery to work on unwired sections of line such as the M.A.L.
Journey times are also quite reasonable, whilst it is a longer and slower route to travel via Bedlington, it is not unduly slow, offering an overall potential journey time of around 131mins (2hrs 11mins) from Newcastle to Edinburgh.
If you agree that this service should be introduced (potentially as a trial given the route exists already), then please sign the Change.org petition here: https://chng.it/J8DxHqpWdf
Thanks, RH.
The Northumberland Coast Loop 