Today, Monday 15th December marks the first full year of the Northumberland Line, running from Ashington, Northumberland to Newcastle Upon Tyne, which opened on Sunday 15th December 2024.
On that day, only two stations of the six stations were opened, Ashington as the terminus of the line, and Seaton Delaval, with Newsham opening a few months later on Monday, 17th March 2025, and later joined by Blyth Bebside on Sunday 19th October 2025.
As of today, there is still not an official announcement for the opening of either Bedlington, or Northumberland Park stations.
Whilst the line is still not fully completed with two stations remaining to be opened, the Northumberland Line has proven to be a HUGE success story in terms of ridership, with many hundreds of thousands of passengers having used the line since it opened, with the total figures quickly heading towards one million; hopefully a precise number may be released later today or in the coming days to show exactly how many have made use of the line in this first year?
UPDATE: 920,000 passengers have used the Northumberland Line to date, with trains running a cumulative 380,000 miles, with 110 drivers and 84 conductors trained on the route.
If anything, the line is something of a victim of its own success, as due to shortages of rolling stock, some trains are only made up of two carriages, resulting in far more people trying to use the line than there is capacity available
Our solution for this is the Northumberland Coast Loop, which would expand the types of train running via a large part of the route (Newcastle to Bedlington, therefore only omitting Ashington station), by running additional rail services from Newcastle to Berwick/Edinburgh via Blyth Bebside and Northumberland Park, which would provide additional seats towards Newcastle, but importantly also give direct links north from SE Northumberland into North Northumberland and Scotland, further increasing the estimated £450m economic gain the line has brought to the area.
As of this morning, our petition for the Northumberland Coast Loop route, from Newcastle to Edinburgh via Blyth Bebside and Northumberland Park has reached 1,043 signatures; showing a strong demand for such a service to be at least trialled, and bearing in mind the SENRUG petition in 2007/8 gained 1098 signatures to reopen the Northumberland Line as a whole (then called the Ashington, Blyth and Tyne Line), then hopefully the Northumberland Coast Loop can be given strong consideration as a solution to both the crowding problems on the Northumberland Line, as well as offering a new rail link connecting the highly successful Northumberland Line to North Northumberland and Scotland?
As we start the second year of the Northumberland Line, lets look forward to it’s continued success, and also how services could be expanded to meet the huge demand for trains to serve the area!
The Northumberland Coast Loop 