As of today, 28th July 2025, the petition for a new rail service from Newcastle to Edinburgh via Bedlington and Pegswood has gained a huge amount of support since its launch on 13th February 2025, with 832 signatures gained so far.
This represents a signing rate of about five persons per day, and if that rate continues, it’ll reach 1000 signatures on or about 200 days since launch; the 31st August 2025.
This date also happens to coincide with the potential opening of Blyth Bebside station, which based on the Northumberland Line webpage, is due around the same time (late August/early September).
Why are Blyth Bebside and Northumberland Park the proposed semi-fast stops?
Of the five current stations open/under construction on the ‘Loop’ part of the route using the majority of the Northumberland Line (all of them except Ashington due to the route and track layout), the stations at Blyth Bebside and Northumberland Park are perhaps the most likely stations to see a semi-fast service stop.
Why Blyth Bebside?
This station is sited very close to the A193 Cowpen Road, the key northern access into the town of Blyth, Northumberland.
This route is point of concentration for several important bus routes (1, 2, & X9), it is also sat almost adjacent to the junction of the A189 Spine Road and A193, and finally is also located near to many active travel routes (walking, cycling etc) that link Blyth, Bedlington and Cramlington together, such as the National Cycle Network Route 1, which is a 1264 mile/2034 km route from Dover to the Highlands of Scotland, that higs the East Coast along much of its length.
Blyth Bebside is also connected by much more local routes such as Hathery Lane, which, with some modest work, could provide an excellent connection to Cramlington for walkers and cyclists.
Blyth Bebside is a potentially much less constrained station compared to that at Bedlington, which perhaps is the more obvious station due to the junction, but is constrained by the junction being at one end, and a level crossing at the other, meaning that longer trains would likely have to overhang either the junction (most likely scenario) or the level crossing (less likely to be permitted).
A longer train standing at Blyth Bebside, especially with the new location is unlikely to be foul of the level crossing at Bebside, allowing traffic to flow, and there are no railway junctions there to worry about either.
Blyth Bebside is also preferred over Newsham as it is more readily accessible from other towns, such as Bedlington, Ashington and more; as well as avoiding as much as possible the ‘wrong way’ travel of going south along the Northumberland Line from a station such as Ashington, through Bedlington and Blyth Bebside, to then change to another service and head north again through Blyth Bebside and Bedlington again en-route to Pegswood, or vice versa.
Why Northumberland Park?
The station at Northumberland Park is likely, once open, to become a major interchange for the Tyne and Wear Metro system, allowing faster trips to places like Whitley Bay, Cullercoats, and Tynemouth, as well as serving major business parks like Cobalt, and the wider area of North Tyneside, and once open, it will become the only National Rail station within North Tyneside itself.
This station could also improve connections to the international ferry terminal with daily sailings between Newcastle and Ijmuiden by DFDS, and the highly successful cruise terminal at the Port of Tyne, with 2023 being recorded as record breaking year with 61 vessels bringing 164,000 passengers into the Tyne, and with a quick, easy rail connection via Northumberland Park by rail into North Northumberland, or through Newcastle onto the Tyne Valley Line, or down either the Durham Coast or the ECML into Durham, a service calling there could prove highly popular to take tourists around Northumberland, Durham and beyond?
If you haven’t already, but would like to, please sign the Northumberland Coast Loop petition for this rail service here: https://chng.it/zThXj8HBpY
Thanks, RH.
The Northumberland Coast Loop 