Will Northumberland Line Success Help More Open?
The title of this post, is the same as this article on the BBC.
This is the sub-heading.
On 29 March the final station, Bedlington, opens on the Northumberland Line marking the completion of the project to reopen the route from Newcastle to Ashington.
These three paragraphs add detail to the story.
With passenger numbers exceeding predictions, could its success give new impetus to other projects to reopen former railways across northern England?
Dennis Fancett, chair of the rail users group Senrug, which campaigned for the Northumberland line for 20 years, hopes so.
He believes the obvious next step is to extend it along the existing freight tracks to a new station at Woodhorn and from there to Newbiggin-by-the-Sea.
I believe that the Northumberland Line is following a pattern, that I call London Overground Syndrome.
The Anonymous Widower 
No unless the industry gets a grip on how much everything costs. Not helped by what little capital has been gifted to railways is in the main going into HS2/TRU. Maybe once these projects are over peak spend we will some more movement.
Comment by Nicholas Ronald Lewis | March 22, 2026 |
A year or so ago, I had a chat with a station guy at Newcastle station.
They had two stations open on the Northumberland Line and he said, that numbers were going up on all routes, much more than was predicted.
The traffic statistics should be analysed, so that they ascertain their quality. Let’s face it some estimates have been rather poor and if they had been accurate, they would have used different rolling stock, but the finances would have been stronger.
Comment by AnonW | March 22, 2026 |
How do you mean different rolling stock?
The rolling stock are based at Heaton which is classed 156 and 158 only.
Comment by chilterntrev | March 22, 2026
The line an existing operational line remember cost over £200m to provide this service. Yes a lot of people are using it and more than forecast but fares are a giveaway and reputedly doesn’t even cover operational costs let alone funding the capex bill. Thats Northumberland’s choice but the amounts involved are ridiculous compared to what was achieved at Okehampton. When i was in BR in the 80’s the GM of the Southern Region would send us packing if we came up with costly solutions as he knew the Treasury would never agree to them so we quickly learnt to come up with cost effective solutions some of which turned our to be too cost effective for sure. Personally I saw that as a positive that in that later years we had saved lines from closure and they had become a success so they got more of an upgrade. So a higher spec would have been better but it still would have been cost effective.
The problem here was the level crossings several of which had to be eliminated because NRs risk model said they would be too dangerous if two trains per hour went over them instead of a couple of freights per day. Our old GM would pushed back against such a binary approach but industry is scared of its own shadow these days and we dont have bold leaders prepared to go out on a limb. Until this philosophy changes its highly unlikely we will see any further reopening’s beyond Portishead.
Comment by Nicholas Ronald Lewis | March 22, 2026
Yesterday, they were running two car trains, today because there’s a match, they’re running a pair of 158s
Comment by AnonW | March 22, 2026 |