This week, Nigel and Richard have made a visit to the Northumberland Line, running from Ashington to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.
Please view their Part 1 video here: https://youtu.be/Fo1o7dIhW3c?si=PTTSGcd8f6ttL4uh
A follow up video is due soon, which I’ll post here as a Part 2 once it is uploaded.
Good to see the interviews within and it’ll be interesting to see the full episode!
A very kindly shared route map from Paul (‘@lf_p’ on Twitter/X), this is a visualisation of a ‘Route Map’ across the North East, ranging from Berwick upon Tweed in the north, down to Horden, and Durham in the south, with Haltwhistle in the west.
As can be seen from the map above, the proposed Northumberland Coast Loop would leave Central Station and follow the route of the Northumberland Line as far as Bedlington, and in this diagram, would curve back towards the East Coast Main Line (ECML), using the existing line through the village of Hepscott, used predominantly by the GBRf ‘Alcan’ flow from North Blyth to Fort William.
At the triangular junction near Morpeth, the N.C.L. would take the upper curve (the Morpeth North Curve) towards Pegswood, the route then running north towards Berwick Upon Tweed and ultimately Edinburgh, again this route is used regularly for the North Blyth to Fort William railfreight, but sadly little else by way of rail traffic on a regular basis, for the time being?
The map above from the SRPS is a more ‘true to geography’ map compared to the above route diagram (in a T&W Metro style), but the Metro style map perhaps shows the layout of lines more clearly, and illustrates why Morpeth and Ashington can’t be directly served by the proposed Northumberland Coast Loop route.
Hopefully these maps make the proposed Northumberland Coast Loop proposal easier to understand.
The petition for this route is continuing to perform strongly, and if you’d like to see it implemented, please sign it here: https://chng.it/J8DxHqpWdf
Thanks again to Paul for providing the above image, it is very much appreciated!
The Summer 2025 issue of the NEPTUG Newsletter features a mention of the campaign for the Northumberland Coast Loop as one of the proposed expansions of the highly successful Northumberland Line.
Thanks to NEPTUG for asking for a contribution towards the Newsletter and hopefully a route that can be introduced rapidly, as it is already in place, it simply needs the service to run!
As we often reiterate here, the proposed service starting at Newcastle Upon Tyne and running through Nortumberland Park, Blyth Bebside, Bedlington, Pegswood, Alnmouth (for Alnwick), Berwick Upon Tweed, and other Scottish stations such as Reston, Dunvar etc on the route to Edinburgh route is feasible today, as all the track required already is in place; as demonstrated by a recent railtour operated by the Scottish Railway Preservation Society, named ‘The Seven Counties Rambler’.
The map above was taken from ‘The Seven Counties Rambler‘ railtour brochure of March 2025, which traversed the route in the late evening of 8th March. A video of this railtour passing through Northumberland Park on that day can be seen here: https://youtu.be/Yf2SSoniR4E?feature=shared
The Northumberland Coast Loop proposal is just for a rail service, with all of the stations on the route map below either already built and serving passengers, or in the final stages of contruction and due to open later this year (2025),
While line capacity on the Northumberland Line and East Coast Main Line (ECML) might pose some challenges, it should be far from impossible to deliver at least a handful of Newcastle – Edinburgh via Bedlington services to start with (perhaps five trains per day in each direction), with potential for such a route to perhaps run hourly in time.
As can be seen above, as of 2nd June, the petition for the route stands strong at 445 signatures, with more being added daily! If you’d like to sign too, please do so here: https://chng.it/J8DxHqpWdf
Very much in the same vein of providing better public transport connections is another petition for improved bus connections between Alnwick, Amble, and Warkworth to Alnmouth Railway Station.
This proposal is to better reconnect the North Northumberland towns of Alnwick and Amble, which have long been off the rail network, into the key railway hub for the area at Alnmouth Station.
The petition again for this is performing well, and if you’d like to add your signature, please do so here: https://chng.it/B4RwwtHnJc
This could be partially delivered through some improvements to existing bus routes such as the X18 and X20 services, where as can be seen below, the X18 omits the station on its route, whilst the X20 travels up South View and Curly Lane to provide a proper interchange between bus and rail services.
Taken together, these two services give around two buses per hour near to the station, but the variation in timings means that buses are not running a consistent timetable, for example the X18 towards Newcastle at 07:03 is then followed by the 07:41 X20 (38mins later), then the next X18 at 08:13 (32 mins later).
A simplification of the timetable could give a much more understandable ‘clockface’ schedule, with arrivals/departures at xx:15 and xx:45 appearing to be reasonable amendments given buses running near to these times already.
That being said, Arriva bus services have been remarked upon by a number of people on social media as having a reputation for being late and/or unreliable (buses failing to turn up at all), which if making rail connections could mean failing to make your inward or outward trip, and with consequences in costs for rebooking rail travel or needing to hire taxis etc.
Hopefully Arriva can run their buses to a more sensible and understandable clockface timetable, and run their buses on-time and reliably as a good starting point?
There could be an advantage however in running a dedicated bus route alongside longer distance buses, which would form a link between Alnwick Bus Station (a possible site for a ‘virtual railway station’, similar to that done in Keswick, Cumbria), Alnmouth Railway Station, Warkworth Castle, and Amble High Street.
This new service could be operated by other bus companies such as Glen Valley Tours, the operator which runs local services such as the 472 between Shilbottle and Barresdale (itself a service that might usefully be extended from Shilbottle to Alnmouth Railway Station via High Buston).
In 2024, a free local bus ran around within Alnwick itself, providing connections between attractions inside of Alnwick, but within a compact and walkable town, it could be arguably better to improve the public transport offer to and from Alnwick as whole; it need not be a free service, but it could, like the free bus service last year be supported/branded by larger attractions such as Alnwick Castle, The Alnwick Garden, and bus tickets maybe could even be integrated into pre-booked attraction tickets?
Please leave a comment below with your thoughts and share where you usually do!
As of this morning, the Northumberland Coast Loop Petition, stands at a brilliant 425 signatures this morning.
This petition aims to see the introduction of a new rail route between Newcastle and Berwick/Edinburgh via Bedlington, directly linking the newly opened Northumberland Line stations to North Northumberland and Scotland, rather than the current situation of transferring between trains at Newcastle Central Station.
On 8th March 2025, I was fortunate to be a passenger aboard the SRPS Railtours ‘The Seven Counties Rambler‘, which took the proposed route between Newcastle and Edinburgh via Bedlington as part of a ‘rare-track’ railtour around Scotland and Northern England, showing how readily this route could be brought into regular passenger use.
Compared to routes such as the Leamside Line, which will require track to be relaid before any trains can run, the link line between Bedlington Junction and Morpeth North Junction is used multiple times per week by the GBRf operated ‘Alcan’ train between the dock at North Blyth and the aluminium smelter in Fort William.
The route has a history of being used for diversions around Morpeth when required, but the huge popularity of the Northumberland Line shows that a new rail service headed north could be a great addition to these brand new stations, and could help deliver further economic benefit to Northumberland as a whole.
If you haven’t already signed the petition, please do so here: https://chng.it/J8DxHqpWdf
It is now 100 days since the petition calling for improved bus services between Alnwick, Alnmouth Railway Station, Warkworth, and Amble was launched, and so far, it has gained the support of 442 people.
A better bus service would make access to and from Alnwick to Alnmouth station easier to do by road, improving the present hourly service to half hourly would be the target, and for the buses to follow a ‘clockface’ schedule of xx and yy mins past the hour to depart towards the station or arrive back from it.
The service would be intended to use conventional buses, and at usual bus fares, not as some have commented online by running luxury coaches etc.
If you would like to add your signature, please do so here: https://chng.it/B4RwwtHnJc
A recent article in the Northumberland Gazette has mentioned that Alnwick, Northumberland has recently gained ‘Coach Friendly’ status, awarded by the Confederation of Passenger Transport.
The economic benefit to Alnwick fro. road going coaches is that they bring in around 150,000 visitors to the town, with about £4.5m worth of economic value as a result (an average of £30 per visitor).
This is great news for the town, and shows that a significant number of arrivals to the town come without a car, but could a better rail & bus connection to Alnwick bring an even greater benefit to the town?
Alnwick lost its passenger rail connection to the East Coast Main Line at Alnmouth on the 29th January 1968, the route closing completely on 7th October 1968, reputedly orchestrated to make the A1 Alnwick Bypass cheaper to build. Had Alnwick station survived, it is highly likely to have been a thriving one now; especially during the peak of the ‘Harry Potter’, an arrival into Alnwick Station aboard a train would almost certainly have been a very atmospheric event, especially if it was on a steam hauled railtour, but sadly this wasn’t to be.
As of May 2025, the former Alnwick Station has instead long been home to the excellent and award winning Barter Books, and whilst truncated by the A1 Alnwick Bypass, the Alnwick Branch is steadily being resurrected by the Aln Valley Railway, running over around half of the surviving route between Lionheart Station (likely the new ‘Alnwick’ terminus of the line in the long-term due to development over the route into Alnwick proper), and Greenrigg Bridge, on the route to Alnmouth Station.
The Aln Valley Railway has achieved a great amount since starting construction of Lionheart station on 27th February 2012, and officially being opened on the 30th October 2013, not quite 12 years to get from quite literally a field, to a railway reaching halfway to Alnmouth is a great achievement.
That being said, while a rail connection into/near Alnmouth station towards Alnwick will always be welcome, it does stop on the edge of town on the eastern side of the A1, with Alnwick Town Centre being around a mile to the north west as the crow flies (Hotspur Tower to Lionheart Station using Google Maps measurement tool), and with it being a volunteer run heritage line is unlikely to be able to offer a year-round, seven day service from early morning to late evening.
In an ideal world, perhaps the Alnwick Branch would have seen a ‘Northumberland Line’ style of reopening, being reopened by Network Rail and operated by Northern, but that wasn’t to be. That being said, the Aln Valley Railway, perhaps with some financial support, could in the future offer a shuttle service to work alongside an Alnwick to Alnmouth & Amble bus shuttle as proposed below.
A practical solution for Alnwick, as put forward in a previous post, could be a ‘virtual railway station’ as recently introduced in Keswick, Cumbria.
This would utilise the existing bus connections from Alnwick to Alnmouth Railway Station, alongside an additional dedicated shuttle service that could allow for a half-hourly shuttle service between Alnwick and Alnmouth, with the route perhaps logically also extended to Amble, so that both towns could benefit from a better integrated bus service.
In recent years, Alnwick ran an ‘Alnwick Attractions Bus’, that formed a free, circular route around Alnwick, and was sponsored by local businesses; but perhaps a shuttle to and from Alnmouth Railway Station into the heart of Alnwick could be similarly sponsored to allow rail passengers better access to major attractions?
A petition launched 99 days ago on 16th February 2025 for such a bus connection has already gained 436 signatures, and tomorrow marks the 100 days since launch, how many signatures will it reach by the end of the day?
If you would like to sign the petition, please do so here: https://chng.it/B4RwwtHnJc
It is now 100 days since the Change.org petition titled ‘Start a Newcastle – Edinburgh Rail Service via Blyth Bebside and Northumberland Park‘ was launched, and tp date, it has attracted an 367 signatures of support, showing a large appetite for such as service to be launched.
The map below, taken from the SRPS Railtours operated ‘The Seven Counties Rambler‘ souvenir brochure shows the route through Northumberland from Newcastle to Berwick, illustrating how ready the route is to enable such a service, with the header image of an HST showing the BLS organised ‘Bound for Craigy’ railtour on 8th March 2017, which inspired this campaign.
If you haven’t already, please sign the petition to help bring this route into passenger use, some of the advantages of which are:
Local Services: Making ‘within Northumberland’ trips such as Bedlington to Berwick Upon Tweed easier by providing a direct rail connection.
Regional Sevices: The above route would like major regional centres such as Blyth, home to major renewable energy businesses more easily accessible from other places within the region by rail, for example offering a direct link to Edinburgh and the wider Scottish Central Belt.
National Services: Giving areas like Blyth a comparable national service like Morpeth has long enjoyed would drive investment into Blyth, and be a major support to significant events returning such as the highly successful Tall Ships of 2016. It would also, via Northumberland Park, provide better rail connections to and from the international ferry terminal/cruise terminal at Port of Tyne.
Please sign the petition here: https://chng.it/dBRgQrKwbV
If you live along the line of this route, please also write to your local county councillors, and MP’s in support of the Northumberland Coast Loop; the more support it gains, the more likely it is to come to fruition!
In the late evening of the 8th March 2025, ‘The Seven Counties Rambler’ operated by SRPS Railtours and hauled by Class 37’s 37409 ‘Loch Awe’ and 37043 ‘Isle of Mull’ departed Newcastle Central Station on the final leg of an epic tour of southern Scotland and Northern England, bound for Edinburgh and finally Linlithgow, where the tour would finish after an early start that morning.
This leg of the tour was of particular interest, as it took the entirety of the proposed Northumberland Coast Loop route from Newcastle to Edinburgh via Bedlington.
The map below shows this section of the route.
The above route is largely special due to a fairly short section of ‘rare track’; the Newcastle to Bedlington section of the route is now open daily to passenger trains since the opening of the Northumberland Line in December 2024, and the East Coast Main Line (ECML) has always been open for passenger trains. The rarely available section was from Bedlington Junction to Morpeth North Junction, a distance of about five miles, which links the Northumberland Line to the ECML.
The upper map shows the overall route, leaving the Northumberland Line at Bedlington, the route heads in a west/north west direction towards and through the village of Hepscott, then curving towards the north east and rejoining the ECML.
Just after Hepscott, and as more clearly shown on the lower map, there is a second split at Hepscott Junction (near to Airspeed Vapour Blasting, bottom right of image), the N.C.L. route bears off to the right here, heading around the Morpeth North Curve (shown by the orange dots) joining the ECML near to Temples Bridge (top centre of the lower image).
The left hand direction would head towards Morpeth Station, which unfortunately, like Ashington cannot be served by the proposed N.C.L. route due to the track layout; as it would necessitate complicated operation of trains, and would reduce the benefits of the proposed direct route by lengthening journey times.
In other news, the Northumberland Coast Loop petition for a Newcastle – Bedlington – Edinburgh rail service is now standing at 360 signatures since being started 99 days ago on the 13th February 2025, an average of 3-4 signatures per day!
Tomorrow, Friday 23rd May 2025, will mark 100 days of the petition, so let’s see how much it progresses over the course of today.
If you haven’t already, please sign the petition here: https://chng.it/zThXj8HBpY and give our social media a like or follow!
A big thank you to David Smith MP for his time, and that of his assistant Theo in meeting with me to discuss the Northumberland Coast Loop rail campaign today via a Teams call.
It was a very positive meeting, and hopefully working together into the future!
As the above document (still a work in progress) records, the spark of the proposal was seeing the ‘Bound for Craigy’ railtour on Barrington Road, Bedlington, back in 2017, hard to believe a busy eight years has now passed, later that year, I got my most important job; being ‘dad’.
The proposal was on a back-burner as a busy new parent (now of two) until October 2023, when I launched a petition for the then Northumberland Loop, it attracting 742 signatures by the time it was closed in October 2024, the results then being passed to Glen Sanderson, leader of Northumberland County Council by email, with a warm response received back.
On the 15th December 2024, the Northumberland Line partially opened with Ashington and Seaton Delaval stations as an initial phase, and passenger figures were very strong right from the outset.
On the 11th February 2025, I met with Mark and Caroline from the office of Ian Lavery, MP for Blyth and Ashington, again to a warm reception, shortly before actually travelling the route on 8th March 2025 aboard the SRPS operated ‘The Seven Counties Rambler’.
Shortly afterwards, Newsham Station opened, on the 17th March 2025, and in recent weeks, the announcement came that 250,000 passengers have travelled upon the Northumberland Line since December 2024.
On the 15th April 2025, I made a ‘within Northumberland’ trip that shows the reasoning behind the Northumberland Coast Loop, a direct rail route from Newsham to Alnmouth is possible via Bedlington and Pegswood, if only a service using the route of the Rambler was to be initiated?
Today was another big step forward with a meeting between myself, David Smith MP and Theo, and hopefully this proposal will keep steadily progressing forwards.
Thanks again to David and Theo for their time again today, and maybe it won’t be too long to see a regular service on the Northumberland Coast Loop route?
As of the 10th May 2025, the petition to ‘Start a Newcastle – Edinburgh Rail Service via Blyth Bebside and Northumberland Park‘ has gained 330 signatures.
This route would better enable ‘within Northumberland’ trips by rail, such as Berwick and Alnmouth (for Alnwick (and Amble)) to or from towns such as Blyth, which are presently poorly linked by public transport.
As can be seen from the maps below, taken from the SRPS Railtours’ ‘The Seven Counties Rambler’ souvenir brochure, a direct rail route is possible today; by simply using the currently under-utilised Morpeth North Curve and Hepscott Line, this would give a Bedlington to Pegswood connection from the Northumberland Line at Bedlington to the East Coast Main Line (ECML) at Pegswood.
This route would also serve longer distance ‘to or from Northumberland’ trips such as Blyth to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen etc, which there is a highly likely latent demand for, aa many people from towns in SE Northumberland such as Blyth take holidays or days out to cities such as Edinburgh or wider destinations in Scotland quite regularly.
If you haven’t already signed it, please do so to help support the route becoming a reality.
This second petition to ‘Start a dedicated ‘Bus Meets Train’ shuttle bus between Alnwick, Alnmouth Station & Amble‘, aims to provide a better bus connection between the non-rail served towns of Alnwick and Amble to the well-used railway station at Alnmouth (the 1000th most used of 2500+ in the UK). As of 10th May 2025, this petition stands at 431 signatures.
Together, these petitions have recieved 761 signatures of support, but it is still growing, please click the links above for more information and to add your support to these proposed routes both on rail and road.
Thank you especially to all who have supported these petitions so far!
The Northumberland Coast Loop