The past week has had a number of significant news announcements, and with a number of links between them, it is perhaps the right time to address them together.
Blyth Bebside station is blossoming; and is boosting overall numbers for the Northumberland Line towards a million passengers!
There has been more great news on the Northumberland Line in recent days, with Northern putting out the one month anniversary post for Blyth Bebside station, which opened to passengers on 19th October 2025, and so far has seen a phenomenal 12,000 passengers using the station!
In the same post, the Northumberland Line as a whole has seen over 800,000 passengers since it opened on the 15th December 2025, and could well be looking at 900,000 to one million passengers by the first anniversary of the line on 15th December 2025, it having opened with just two stations on Sunday 15th December 2024.
The two stations left to open at Bedlington, and Northumberland Park have not yet had an official opening date announced, but like the other stations are likely to prove equally busy, and perhaps especially for Northumberland Park, as an interchange with the Tyne and Wear Metro, could give a massive increase in passenger numbers for people travelling to and from North Tyneside via Northumberland Park.
Hopefully these remaining stations will be opened early in 2026 (now unlikely to open before the New Year), and mark the completion of the first phase of the Northumberland Line.
All in all, the Northumberland Line is continuing to exceed expectations on all fronts, and despite the issues of cost overruns and delays, is very much looking like a no-regrets project; it having far more use than was ever anticipated even by the most ardent advocates for the reopening, and every announcement showing a huge leap in passenger growth on the line too. Long may it continue its huge success!
Woodhorn and Newbiggin Extension
Also in recent news were the plans that Newbiggin by the Sea might soon see an extension of the Northumberland Line into the coastal former mining town, which could see two new stations added beyond Ashington, the first at Woodhorn (likely to be near Woodhorn Museum), and a second station built on the edge of Newbiggin itself.
This would require rebuilding around a mile of track from the bridge carrying the railway over the A189 and dropping down into the town, as the former route was lifted with closure of the station and former colliery in the 1960’s.
This campaign welcomes this proposed expansion further along the Newbiggin branch, as well as potential to also extend the route further along the Lynemouth Branch to more directly serve Lynemouth and Ellington too.
- The first option could be to run into Lynefield Park, a large brownfield development site (Lynefield Park, Ashington NE63 9YH) sited on the former Alcan aluminium smelter near Lynemouth. This site has a currently disused rail link, but could be ideally placed as an extension of the Northumberland Line as the trackbed was used until closure of the smelter in 2012, and could help drive industrial developments on the site too. Reopening the link for passenger services could also help reconnect the site for railfreight users too, as the freight link could be added onto the end of the passenger line, reducing the cost of maintaining the entire branch line into the smelter site?
- The second option would be to extend the N’land Line to edge of Lynemouth village itself, where the current headshunt for the power station biomass trains ends very close to the Lynemouth Miners Welfare Institute (Bridge Rd, Lynemouth, Morpeth NE61 5YJ). This might perhaps be more complex than the options of going to Newbiggin, or to Lynefield Park as alterations to trackwork within the existing and still active Lynemouth Power Station might be required, but could be borne in mind as a future option, especially when the power station is closed and the site cleared in the future.
Northumberland Coast Loop petition progressing well!
Alongside the above extension to the Northumberland Line towards Newbiggin (as well as potentially Lynefield Park/Lynemouth) our petition for the Northumberland Coast Loop, which seeks to use the existing Newcastle – Bedlington – Hepscott – Pegswood – Berwick – Edinburgh route for long distance services calling at Blyth Bebside and Northumberland Park continues to do well, now standing at 992 signatures as of this morning (20th November 2025).
Unlike the extension to Newbiggin, or even that to Lynefield Park or Lynemouth, the route is already wholly in place; the line through the village of Hepscott being used several times a week for railfreight (notably the GBRf operated alumina train between the dock at Port of Blyth to the Lochaber smelter in Fort William on the Scottish west coast), this train coming through Hepscott and using the Morpeth North Curve to head directly to/from Scotland to reach Bedlington.
Route maps of this proposed route show the potential of connecting Newcastle and Edinburgh via Blyth alongside the existing route via Morpeth and Cramlington, in effect, the Northumberland Coast Loop is just an alternative route a train can take to travel between the two cities, and whilst slower than the route via Cramlington, a stop at Blyth Bebside station serves the largest population centre in Northumberland (Blyth), with easy access to Blyth Bebside by rail, bus, taxi, car (via A189/A193), and even active travel from the surrounding towns of Ashington, Bedlington, and Cramlington, making it very strategically located and hence its suggestion as a key stop on this Northumberland Coast Loop route.
Once opened, Northumberland Park will be the only conventional railway station in the North Tyneside Metropolitan Borough since the 1970’s, so a long distance service to and from this station would give the area a much wider range of direct connections, and could be a massive boost to business parks such as Cobalt, one of the largest in the UK by offering an InterCity link close by, as well as the close location of the Port of Tyne, especially for connections to the DFDS ferry to Amsterdam, and cruises into the Port of Tyne.
Back in March this year, I actually travelled this line on the SRPS Railtour ‘The Seven Counties Rambler‘, which is where the map below is derived from, being taken from the brochure given out on the day, which shows how complete the route is, trains could be using it now to give this connection north into North Northumberland and Scotland given paths and rolling stock being made available.
As also stated in numerous blogs and posts, this route would have the added advantage of adding seating capacity onto the Northumberland Line by adding some additional trains to the route alongside the half-hourly Northumberland Line service, and would also reduce the number travelling into Newcastle purely to back-track north on board other trains via Cramlington, instead, people could simply travel north on a direct service; reducing overall journey times, and making trips easier and more comfortable (time isn’t ‘wasted’ on the train as it is possible to settle down to work, or simply to sit back and relax).
If you’d like to support the campaign by signing the petition, 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
Moor Farm roundabout: End the National Highways ‘veto’, and use of rail to ease congestion issues.
In recent days, the Moor Farm Roundabout (where the A19 and A189 cross each other near the Northumberland border with North Tyneside), as well as that at Seaton Burn (where the northern end of the A19 meets the A1) has again been raised as an issue by local MP Emma Foody, alongside supporting remarks by Ian Lavery MP, as effects ripple far more widely than just the immediate area of the roundabout itself.
On the congestion itself, Moor Farm Roundabout has long been a congestion hotspot, with heavy traffic in all directions almost all of the time, but road congestion is something almost impossible to ‘build your way out of’, as to paraphrase the wise Lewis Mumford, who wrote back in 1955 (70 years ago in The New Yorker) ‘Building more roads to prevent congestion is like a fat man loosening his belt to prevent obesity.’
As can be seen from the Tyne Tunnel, of which a second bore was opened up in 2012, the traffic issues have not really been ‘solved’ at the Tyne Tunnel, or elsewhere as it is still an area very prone to congestion, as despite hundreds of millions of pounds spent on the second Tyne Tunnel, and the rebuilding of Silverlink and Testos roundabouts, driving around there is still likely to have you stationary at peak times; as simply more roads result in more traffic.
The same has happened on the A1 Western Bypass, despite spending again hundreds of millions of pounds, road congestion continues to be an issue as building more lanes results in more traffic using the road, filling up the additional capacity created and returning congestion to how it was before.
No-one enjoys road congestion, and the apparently logical course appears to be widening of roads, or building totally new ones, but it simply allows more traffic onto the road and soon after, any benefit is negated by this additional traffic, as can be seen in the above examples; going around the MetroCentre, or via the Tyne Tunnel isn’t fast or congestion free, despite more and more lanes, roundabout rebuilds, and more.
National Highways ‘veto’ power should be ended and let building homes and businesses happen.
The real issue is that due to the congestion, National Highways can effectively ‘veto’ planning applications to attempt to throttle back road traffic:
“National Highways can issue holding recommendations on planning applications, in effect preventing them from moving forward. There are at least four holding objections on applications for housing and business development as a direct result of the Moor Farm roundabout.” Emma Foody MP as quoted in the Northumberland Gazette.
The Northumberland Line/Coast Loop to relieve the A189 and release developments from National Highways constraint?
The relevance of this to the Northumberland Coast Loop, and the above celebration of the Northumberland Line continuing to thrive is that the railway provides a great alternative to driving at all; a person riding a train, or goods moving via railfreight doesn’t add anything to road congestion, and if anything actually relieves it via modal shift (changing from a car trip to being a rail passenger, or goods going by rail and not by road).
The effect of the Northumberland Line having over 800,000 passengers is that clearly fewer people are travelling by road; anecdotal evidence from social media and conversations with friends and family shows that many have swapped car trips for rail journeys, which means that rail is taking a much greater share of overall travel now the Northumberland Line is open and moving towards completion.
Therefore, and in my own view, the throttling back of planning applications by National Highways for development of homes and businesses should be ended, with investment instead put into the Northumberland Line and Northumberland Coast Loop to increase train capacity to take more people by rail, rather than road, and allow much needed new homes and businesses to break ground as soon as possible.
The Northumberland Line has cost around £336.4m to develop 18 miles of line from a low freight line to a bustling passenger line with six new stations (Ashington, and Bedlington are really ‘new’ due to large rebuilds of both), and the ‘do minimum’ for Moor Farm and Seaton Burn is £300m, rising to £775m for the largest scheme; putting even a fraction of that sum into the Northumberland Line/Coast Loop for more track, trains or new routes could massively improve local transport and open up developments without the need to pay hundreds of millions to rebuild one or two roundabouts.
The Northumberland Coast Loop 