As the petition for the Northumberland Coast Loop route (Newcastle – Bedlington – Edinburgh) continues to grow and gain signatures, it is perhaps worth considering how the route might look.
Why run a rail route between Newcastle, Bedlington, and on to Edinburgh?
The Northumberland Line, running effectively a shuttle service between Ashington and Newcastle Central, has proven massively successful, with over 400,000 passengers to date, despite only half of the stations being open as yet, with Bedlington, Blyth Bebside, and Northumberland Park still under construction.
This link between the coalfield towns of south east Northumberland and Newcastle has long been desired, and shows the massive latent demand for a good rail service into Newcastle, with many also likely to be travelling beyond ‘the Toon’ too, with easy interchange to other services heading east to Sunderland and down the Durham Coast, south to Durham, Darlington, York, and more, or west to Hexham, and Carlisle.
Going south to head north?
From Newcastle, it is also possible to head north, through Morpeth and on into North Northumberland and Scotland, with cities such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and more on this route north.
From being a lifelong resident of Northumberland, and having lived for my first quarter of a century in the SE corner of the county, there is plenty of traffic headed northwards from the area, with families spread along the length of the coast, people commuting to and from work in both directions, and also for leisure, trips up to places like Alnwick, Berwick, and more in the north of the county, and cities such as Edinburgh, as wider Scotland too being large markets.
That being said, whilst it is now possible to do, and is still an improvement in journey times by using the new rail link; the idea of heading south from the new Northumberland Line stations, into to Newcastle and then head north again is illogical, and also incurs a double time penalty, the first from travelling the wrong way into Newcastle, but also a second penalty of time due to the waiting time in Central Station for the connecting service heading north.
Cramlington or Morpeth to catch northbound trains?
The other option is to catch northbound ECML services further north, at stations such as Cramlington or Morpeth, however, the relatively poor service pattern at Cramlington is a limitation on its usefulness (most trains terminate at Morpeth, so involving a change of train again there), and Morpeth can be an awkward station to reach, buses are not particularly great at interchanging at Morpeth Railway Station, often requiring a fair walk between bus stop and station or vice versa, and from towns such as Blyth, a hypothetical trip to Berwick would have a longer bus trip (40mins+ on the No.2 bus) from Blyth to Morpeth than the rail trip from Morpeth to Berwick (approx 30mins) would take!
In the absence of stations on the lines around Bedlington, Blyth et al, services calling at Morpeth was reasonable provision for that area of the county, but now that stations are reopening on this route, with the added advantage of a new curve opened in 1980 at Morpeth, a direct route is now possible for the first time, and in my view is now ready to be used to make travel to, from and within Northumberland far easier and more convenient, avoiding the need to travel further by road, or to change trains at Morpeth.
Direct trains Newcastle to Edinburgh via Bedlington
In contrast, a train leaving Newcastle could run up the newly reopened Northumberland Line, at the same timings that the N’land Line trains run at, before cutting back across to the East Coast Main Line (ECML) using the existing link between Bedlington and Pegswood (used as part of the route for the regular ‘Alcan’ train between North Blyth and Fort William), and be headed for Scotland.
The Seven Counties Rambler
The last passenger carrying train, to my knowledge, to run over the this route was the SRPS Railtours charter train ‘The Seven Counties Rambler’ on Saturday 8th March 2025.
The running times for this train can seen below for an indication of journey times, but was based on a pair of Class 37 diesels hauling vintage carriages, not modern units, so the times are likely to be significantly generous to ensure keeping time.
As an example, Newcastle to Bedlington, even factoring in station stops, does not take 39¼ minutes for more modern Northumberland Line trains, but for this fairly slow train to travel from Bedlington to Morpeth North Junction in 13 minutes indicates how quick it potentially could be if operated with modern units and after receiving upgrades on the line.
Morpeth – Edinburgh travel indicates potential market size
From the RAILWAYDATA.CO.UK page for Morpeth, it can be seen that Edinburgh is the second-most popular destination, with 36,429 journeys recorded in the 2023/24 operating year after travel to Newcastle.
It is not unreasonable to assume that a significant percentage of these passengers originated in nearby towns such as Bedlington, Blyth, Ashington etc, so a new direct service via the Northumberland Coast Loop might shift some of this traffic away from Morpeth towards the proposed stop at Blyth Bebside, which for many passengers will be both closer and more convenient due to easy access via the A189 Spine Road, and the large, free car park, as well as easier bus, taxi and for many close-by residents, shorter walking and cycling distances.
In the larger data available from this website, other stations in North Northumberland and Scotland such as Berwick features strongly (5,920 passengers), Alnmouth (5,822), and Glasgow (Queen Street & Central) bringing in 3,938, with other stations bringing in smaller volumes.
The Northumberland Line does, however illustrate another factor, that there is potentially a large and untapped latent demand; people who are either travelling by other means currently (such as driving), or indeed may not be travelling at all, so a new rail route may well do far better than simply sharing out existing traffic by actually adding new rail users into the mix too, so a share of the above could very well represent a minimum flow, not a maximum.
The TPE Nova 1 fleet a good fit for the N.C.L?
PLEASE NOTE: This fleet and operator is purely used as an illustrative example, any operator or rolling stock would be welcome to operate this service.
The five car Nova 1 fleet (or similar) operated by Transpennine Express (or other TOC) could be a good candidate for operating the Northumberland Coast Loop; these five cR Hitachi 80x units ply daily between Newcastle and Edinburgh, their relatively short train lengths being ideal for the short platforms of the Northumberland Line (these units also call at Chester-Le-Street which has 110m platforms, very similar in size to the N’land Line, and units presumably are fitted with selective door opening to ensure only doors safely on the platform will open, the rest remaining closed).
This is in addition to these units being 125mph capable bi-mode units, meaning that they can help maintain schedules on the ECML, but could then come off the wires to run around the B&T lines that form the Northumberland Coast Loop before rejoining the route.
They would also provide a useful boost to capacity on the Northumberland Line, which particularly on major events in Newcastle has been known to struggle, but with 342 seats, each train would provide more than 4-car 158 sets, which are sometimes challenging to provide.
In addition, the spaces for bicycles would be useful for cyclists undertaking the coastal national cycle route, which the Northumberland Coast Loop follows along its length from Berwick to Blyth.
Costs
The existing link line between Bedlington Junction and Morpeth North Junction is already in regular use for railfreight, and is a recognised diversionary route, and alongside the Northumberland Line scheme has seen level crossings such as that at Choppington upgraded with new equipment, as well as being used regularly for stakeholder trains, diverted biomass trains, and railtours so it can be reasonably assumed to be in an overall good condition, and there require little to no extra investment to bring a limited service into use.
At a worst case scenario, a similar upgrade to the Northumberland Line might be required, such as partial (was double track from Choppington station to Bedlington historically), or full doubling of the line. The Northumberland Line cost an average of c.£16.6m per mile (£298.5m overall cost ÷ 18 miles of route), but these costs were inclusive of resignalling, level crossing upgrades, the new Newsham bridge, and six new stations, many with large car parks and complex works).
At 4.78 miles in length (7.7km) between the two junctions, this would result in a ballpark high end figure of £79.7m (4.8 miles of route × £16.6m/mile), but could potentially include the cost for Choppington Station (approx £10m for single platform, £20m for two platform), as well as the potential cost of replacing the A1068 Choppington Level Crossing with a bridge (road dropping below railway the most likely option), which based on cost of Newsham Bridge, could cost around c.£30m.
Taking the c.£10m-20m cost of Choppington Station, and the c.£30m cost A1068 bridge replacement for the level crossing might reduce costs by £40m-50m, bringing this 4.8 mile link line to a cost of around £30m without these add on costs, which could be delivered later in the case of Choppington station, or for the A1068 level crossing, retention of the existing crossing may be acceptable.
If you’d like to support this route, please sign the petition here: https://chng.it/wbhpn9ffpJ
The Northumberland Coast Loop 