In a recent post about East Coast Main Line (ECML) capacity upgrades to enable more rail services between Newcastle and Edinburgh, such as the Northumberland Coast Loop, certain locations have already been identified by Network Rail for infrastructure changes, one of which is new loops in Pegswood area.
This could have a major effect on the proposed upgrade of the present Pegswood station into Pegswood Parkway, and could give it a similar appearance to Sandy station in Bedfordshire, with more details below!
New loop lines at Pegswood?
As can be seen in the extract from the above report, loops at either Stannington or Pegswood are options, but for the Northumberland Coast Loop, the Pegswood option is likely to be the favourable option, as it allows traffic joining the ECML headed north towards Edinburgh, or leaving it headed south to be looped on the ECML if required.
Construction of these loops, without any other upgrades such as Pegswood station, would still bring a capacity benefit to the ECML, but perhaps there is an option to multiply the benefits by rolling in a long-proposed upgrade of Pegswood station with construction of the loops?
Strategic site, and transform Pegswood station into Pegswood Parkway by simply adding a car park, and becoming a ‘hub’ for Ashington, Morpeth and beyond.
Almost three years ago, in November 2022, I first proposed Pegswood station to be upgraded into Pegswood Parkway, and before that in 2021 for Pegswood station to be upgraded due to its strategic location.
Pegswood would be ideally sited to become Pegswood Parkway (a common name for a Park and Ride Railway Station), a notable local example being the MetroCentre station on the Tyne Valley Line.
This strategic location is further bettered due to the close proximity of the A197 Pegswood Bypass, which at its western end connects onto the Whorral Bank Roundabout, offering links over to the A1, A697 and A192 via the Morpeth Northern Bypass, the A197 dropping down into Morpeth parallel to the River Wansbeck, and the B1337 towards Longhirst.
At the eastern end of the A197 Pegswood Bypass, is the link across to Ashington and Newbiggin, with the links to the A1068 and A189 Spine Road placing the station centrally for a wide catchment area, and avoiding the obvious issues of congestion around accessing the stations of both Morpeth and Ashington.
As can be seen on the image above, there is ample land to develop a simple but large car park between the railway and the bypass, with easy potential to access such a car park directly from the A197, and thus not adding any traffic into the village of Pegswood itself, as well as avoiding additional traffic feeding into Morpeth (a town with known congestion issues). Access to and from this car park could be directly from the A197 Pegswood Bypass, just west of the Pegswood Fire Station, therefore not adding to traffic in Pegswood itself, and could easily be linked to the station via a short footpath to the southbound platform just to the north of the Juliet Oakley Childrens Park.
The existing 35 bus service runs through the town of Pegswood, and passes very close to the present station site, offering a great public transport connection to the station too, and the nearby National Cycle Network Route 155 also passes very close to the station too.
Therefore, Pegswood is well sited, not just to serve the community of Pegswood, but could also clearly serve a much wider area, which includes Morpeth and Ashington, which will be outlined below.
Morpeth, whilst the station is on the ECML itself, it could still benefit from an upgraded local service calling at Pegswood to ‘feed’ into Morpeth station, allowing people to park at Pegswood and then travel into Morpeth to meet onward services. This could reduce road congestion within Morpeth itself, and with a regular bus service calling at the station could be a doubled up park and ride for the town.
An upgrade of Pegswood station to service the small number of Northumberland Coast Loop services stopping to serve Morpeth and Ashington, as well as for local services along the ECML is not intended to displace any other services calling at Morpeth; indeed it is intended to complement Morpeth by provision of additional parking away from that station but easily accessible from.
A call at Morpeth station directly is not possible due to the route of the Northumberland Coast Loop (N.C.L.) [see image below] which between Pegswood and Bedlington uses the Morpeth North Curve; this route does not run through Morpeth station, but a short drive/bus ride to Pegswood station would allow easy connection to N.C.L. services by Morpeth residents or visitors should it be required. The primary market for Morpeth residents is likely to be access to the stations and areas served by ‘the loop’; Bedlington, Blyth Bebside, Newsham, Seaton Delaval, and Northumberland Park (for North Tyneside etc).
This station would be useful in the event of disruption occuring that used the Northumberland Coast Loop route for diversions; an example being engineering work, or damage to infrastructure such as occurred at Plessey Viaduct in October 2023; had this been been more severely damaged, diversions via Blyth might have been put in place (as has happened before during rail accidents at Morpeth Curve).
It is worth noting that if the proposed Ashington – Alnmouth ‘Butterwell Line’ was to be built, this route would also omit serving Morpeth, but the N.C.L. route via Pegswood offers a perhaps more reasonable connection.
Ashington, like Morpeth above is also not served by the N.C.L. route directly, but again this is due to the existing track layout; it is currently, and has never yet been possible to have a direct train from Ashington towards Edinburgh. The previous mineral lines did connect Ashington to the ECML, but in a southfacing direction; meaning trains headed north from Ashington would curve south near Linton Colliery, and head south again towards Pegswood and Morpeth.
The ‘Butterwell Line‘ campaign is seeking to alter the layout of the former, and long disused, colliery lines through Ashington Community Woods and the former Butterwell Disposal Point, and create a new curve and junction onto the ECML near to Ulgham. This is likely to be a long-term project, that will need a considerable investment to create.
The Northumberland Coast Loop route, by contrast uses currently working freight and passenger lines entirely, and would be based upon ‘no regret’ upgrades to routes such as the ECML and newly opened Northumberland Line, so could be implemented more quickly, and at lower up-front cost potentially than the Ashington – Widdrington link ‘Butterwell Line’.
If the Butterwell Line was to be built in the future, then a decision would need to be made if the N.C.L. route may get altered to run via Ashington rather than Pegswood, but as stated, upgrading Pegswood into Pegswood Parkway is likely to still represent a ‘no regrets’ scheme, as enhanced local services would still be able to operate to and from the station.
Conclusion: Pegswood could work as a hub for Morpeth and Ashington on the N.C.L. route
Whilst Pegswood is obviously a small settlement between its larger neighbours of Ashington and Morpeth, as outlined above it could act as a ‘hub’ for both, not dissimilar to how Alnmouth station a few miles north acts as a hub for the towns of Alnwick and Amble.
Pegswood Station: Present and Future
Pegswood Station today: Rebuild required for better accessibility.
As can be seen from the photos below, Pegswood is an existing station on the ECML, and is currently served by just three trains per day. One issue at Pegswood is the low platform height, especially on the southbound line, evidenced by the ‘Harrington Hump‘ which can be seen in the upper photo, which froms a short raised section for better access to/from trains.
This is a good example of a low-cost alteration that has offered a temporary improvement a low platform, but realistically the long term fix is to correct the entire platform for height and offset (making level boarding easier as new units are increasingly designed to meet these standard heights).
Therefore, Pegswood would ideally see both platforms rebuilt to the correct standards, BUT, if loops are also proposed at Pegswood, then both schemes could be linked together; rebuild the platforms alongside the loop lines to allow stopped trains to be overtaken, which is inherently better than the current capacity limitations of a two platform station on a two-track railway.
Pegswood Parkway but Sandy Style?
As the report at the top of the post outlined, there is an option to increase the capacity of the ECML via the addition of loop lines at Pegswood. This would allow stopped trains to be overtaken by non-stop services; increasing the capacity of the ECML.
This presents a further opportunity; if Pegswood needs to be rebuilt anyway to correct the platform heights, then why not also place the platforms on the loops? This would allow stopped trains to be out of the way of fast expresses roaring through Pegswood, as they do at present (see this video as an example), rather than a stopping service having to be squeezed into very limited paths as they are at present.
This could give Pegswood station a very similar appearance to Sandy station in Bedfordshire, where the platforms would most likely sit against the outside pair of lines, with the inner pair remaining as the fast through lines, as can be seen from the image below. A video of trains running through Sandy can also be seen here.
A very similarly station is proposed at Belford, again a little further north on the ECML, at a proposed £14m cost in November 2024, but at that location the loop lines already exist, so it is platforms only in terms of cost.
The track layout at Sandy station, similar to Hitchin and many others, enables fast trains to whizz past other services stopped at the station, and whilst the layout at Pegswood is likely to be loops rather than a full length of four-track layout (effectively like a layby for stopped trains rather than the equivalent of dual carriageway), it will still increase the capacity of the ECML positively and allow more trains to call at Pegswood, both local, and in the case of the Northumberland Coast Loop, long-distance ones too.
Costs
The 2020 price range for new loops at Pegswood was in the £5m to £50m range (Medium cost), which when adjusted to 2025 prices is a range of £6.4m to £64m for loops only.
The price of a new two platform station, essentially the same for a rebuild of Pegswood ‘as is’ or providing a new station built adjacent to the new loops, would be approximately £14m to £20m, based on other stations proposals such as Belford, but allowing for a contingency.
Therefore, an ‘all in’ cost of loops and a new station would likely fall somewhere within a range of £20.4m to £84m, but would need to be properly assessed to gain a more accurate costing, but compared to a route such as the ‘Butterwell Line’, which is highly likely to cost £100m+ (again would need full and professional assessement to ascertain true cost), the upgrade of Pegswood station and loop lines might well prove more cost effective as an option to improve the railways in Northumberland.
If you would like to support the petition for the Northumberland Coast Loop, please do so here: https://www.change.org/p/start-a-newcastle-edinburgh-rail-service-via-blyth-bebside-and-northumberland-park
The Northumberland Coast Loop 