With the fourth station on the line at Blyth Bebside due to open tomorrow (19th October 2025), and already around 700,000 passengers having travelled on the Northumberland Line since it opened less than a year ago (15th December 2024), there have been many of the two carriage trains becoming overwhelmed by the volume of passengers using the services, with occasionally passengers being unable to board due to how full the trains are.
To help ease this problem (in many ways a good one, in that the line is being far more successful than was predicted, and proves the ‘build it, and they will come’ of major public transport investment), the operator of trains, Northern, is putting on extra carriages where possible at peak times to provide added capacity, but a shortage of diesel multiple units (DMU’s) like the Class 156 and 158 used on the route, as well as others across the UK nationally is an issue.
The statement in the article that ‘Northern have introduced extra carriages on some of its services and will continue to closely monitor capacity with a view to meeting demand wherever possible.‘ is an encouraging one, but does suggest that what might be possible could be limited in scope, due to the availability of old units like the Class 156 and 158 trains, which are stretched thinly across the UK.
Encouragingly, the article does also state that ‘Programme partners will continue to explore all options to provide more capacity for customers, while acknowledging the real practical difficulties because of the shortage of suitable vehicles nationally.‘ so perhaps our suggestion of using other trains, such as the TPE Nova 1 fleet, CrossCountry or other diesel/bi-mode units to run the Newcasyle to Edinburgh via Bedlington route, and thus augment the Northumberland Line services (run alongside the Northern trains) has happily not been ruled out, and the other major advantage of this would be offering direct services from this immensely popular reopened line serving south east Northumberland, into North Northumberland and Scotland.
Our petition for this is steadily reaching 1000 signatures, and if you’d like to add yours, please do so here: https://www.change.org/p/start-a-newcastle-edinburgh-rail-service-via-blyth-bebside-and-northumberland-park/exp/cl_/cl_sharecopy_490421148_en-GB/10/679068674?recruiter=679068674&recruited_by_id=f8c66ca0-ee1b-11e6-b726-5dfd818fd527&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_content=cl_sharecopy_490421148_en-GB%3A10
The Northumberland Coast Loop 