Ashington and Blyth get their trains back

The communities of Ashington and Blyth have been without a train service for 60 years. Following the Beeching report, their branch of the Blyth and Tyne Railway (B&TR) closed to passengers in 1964 but remained open to serve local collieries. Although these have since closed, the line has around five freight trains per day to provide the Lynemouth bio-mass power station with wood chips from the Port of Tyne.

In the 1980s, the southern part of the B&TR saw a resurgence in traffic when it became the newly created Tyne and Wear Metro’s North Tyneside Loop. Yet, just north of the Metro, the communities of Ashington and Blyth were left without a passenger train service despite being on an operational railway.

From Newcastle, it is 30km by rail to Ashington, with the first 6.9km being on the ECML to Benton Junction.

Since the 1990s there have been various calls to restore the line’s passenger service. In response, Northumberland County Council (NCC) commissioned AECOM and SLC Rail to produce a Strategic Outline Business Case which was published in 2019. This showed that the Northumberland Line has a catchment area of over 90,000 people and estimated the annual benefit to the local economy of a restored passenger railway to be £70 million gross value added. It also noted that the 35-minute rail journey from Ashington to Newcastle would be half the bus journey time.

In January 2020, NCC, which was leading the project, approved £10 million for ground investigation and detailed design supported by AECOM which provided technical consultancy, business case development, and project management services.

The Department for Transport (DfT) contributed £34 million under the Restoring your Railway scheme in 2021 when the estimated cost of the project was £166 million. In May 2021, NCC applied for a Transport and Works Act Order (TWAO) for powers to open the line such as closing level crossings and acquiring land. This was granted in June 2022 after a public inquiry. By March 2022, planning permission had been granted for the line’s new stations.

Work starts

The project’s first substantial work took place in June 2021 when 550 metres of track was renewed. The project’s trackwork comprised of 25km of track renewals and the installation of 22 sets of switches and crossings. This was delivered by the Central Rail Systems Alliance (CRSA), a grouping of Network Rail, Balfour Beatty, AtkinsRéalis, and TSO.

Of the 23km branch from Benton Junction to Ashington, 11.3km was single track which, in addition to its current five freight trains per day, could not accommodate the required two passenger trains per hour. To accommodate this extra traffic a 2.4km loop was provided between new junctions at Holywell (5km) and Seghill (7.4km) and existing double track was extended southward for 1.9km from Newsham to the new House Farm junction (11.1km). Figures in brackets are the distances from Benton North junction.

In addition to the earthworks required for this double tracking work, two replacement under bridges were required.

At around 12 locations, the track was realigned to provide an increase in linespeed. As a result, for three quarters of its length the passenger train line speed is between 55 and 70mph. On the rest of the line there are various locations where sharp curves and junctions reduce the linespeed to 25 or 30mph.

Stations

In August 2021, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure (MSI) was awarded a contract for the construction of the line’s six new stations and other civil engineering work. MSI contracted Ground Control, to undertake the vegetation clearance along the line. These stations are:

Northumberland Park (3.5km) with a single 80-metre platform that will provide an interchange with the adjacent Tyne and Wear Metro station.

Seaton Delaval (8.8km) with a single 100-metre platform and a 284-space car park.

Newsham (13.0km) with two 100-metre platforms and two car parks either side of the line with 140 and 97 spaces. Southwest of the station were the remains of iron age/Romano-British enclosure and possible roundhouse which required an archaeological investigation prior to construction.

Blyth Bedside (16.4km) with two 100-metre platforms and a 283-space car park. This is separated from the town by the A189 trunk road and so a 400-metre footpath is provided with a new footbridge over the A189. This was installed by Rainton Construction which was part of MSI’s delivery team.

Bedlington (18.3km) with two platforms 200-metres and 300-metres long and 35-space car park. This is immediately before the junction with the line to Morpeth.

Ashington (23.0km) with a 200-metre single platform and a 269-space car park. This is on a spur off the double track freight line to Lynemouth to ensure that turning back passenger trains will not delay freight trains.

Trains between Newcastle and Ashington also stop at Manors station which is 0.9km outside Newcastle station.

The 717 documents submitted to obtain planning permission for these six new stations indicate the costs involved in this process to ensure that key issues are addressed. These included local objections and mining risk assessments which were a significant issue at most stations. Yet, having read some of these lengthy documents, your writer is left thinking there should be a more cost-effective way of dealing with such issues.

When the line opened on 15 December 2024, only Seaton Delaval and Ashington stations were open. Newsham is expected to open early this year with other three stations opening around the end of 2025.

Level crossings

In February 2022, Siemens Mobility was engaged for the design and delivery of telecoms, lineside infrastructure, and power upgrades as well as the upgrades at eight level crossings.

Before the start of the project, the 23km Ashington branch had no less than 21 level crossings of which 10 were public highway crossings. The increased level crossing risk from the provision of a passenger service required a programme of crossing upgrades and closures.

As a result, eight crossings were closed. One of these was the highway crossing at Newsham station (8.1 km) which was replaced by a new 480-metre road and overbridge. The other closures were public footpath and private highway crossings. Closed footpath crossings at Palmersville Dairy (0.5km) and Chase Meadows (15.7km) were respectively replaced by an underpass and footbridge. The other five closed crossings had their rights relinquished by the TWAO.

This left the line with four footpath crossings and nine highway crossings. Of the four remaining footpath crossings, two were considered to have sufficient line of sight, the crossing at Earsden (4.2 km) was upgraded to one with Overlay Miniature Stop Lights (OMSL), and the crossing at Bedlington North Wicket Gate (WG) was provided with an Integrated MSL.

Of the nine remaining highway crossings, risk assessment showed that there was no requirement to upgrade three of them: the Automatic half-Barrier (AHB) crossing at Seghill (7.5 km), the Manually Controlled Barrier (MCB) CCTV crossing at Plessey Road (14.1 km), and the MCB crossing at Bedlington South (16.6 km). The provision of obstacle detectors and CCTV was a significant aspect of upgrades to the other crossings as shown below:

• Holywell (4.9 km) from ABCL (Automatic half-Barrier crossing locally monitored) to AHB.
• Bebside (16.7 km) from AHB to MCB with Obstacle Detection (OD).
• Bedlington North User Worked Crossing (UWC) (18.5 km) from MCB to MCB-CCTV.
• Marcheys House (20.8 km) from MCB to MCB-OD.
• North Seaton (21.5 km) from MCB to MCB-OD.
• Green Lane (22.5 km) from AHB to MCB-OD with pedestrian stop lights.

Signalling

In addition to the level crossing work, Siemens resignalled the line with its modular signalling system which has been used in North Wales and elsewhere. This equipment is manufactured and tested at the company’s Chippenham factory before being transported to site.

The new signalling transferred control from local signal boxes to the Tyneside Integrated Electronic Control Centre (IECC). As a result, signal boxes at Newsham, North Seaton, and Marcheys House were demolished. The signalling was commissioned in two stages. Easter saw the signalling going live between Ashington and Bedlington, while the remainder of the line between Bedlington and Benton Junction on the ECML was commissioned in August.

Following this commissioning, Northern ran its first train along the length of the line on 5 August 2024 and was then able to start driver training.

Ashington re-connected

When Ashington line was reconnected to the rail network on 15 December, this added two stations to the main line railway network, bringing the total number of stations on the main line network to 2,588. Since 2010, the network has seen 67 new stations though only 15 of these were from six railway re-openings. In addition to Ashington, the other re-openings were Airdrie to Bathgate, Ebbw Vale extension, Borders, Okehampton and Levenmouth.

The Ashington re-opening has some similarities to the Levenmouth re-opening. Both communities suffered high unemployment after the closure of their mines and had an existing freight line which made their rail re-openings a realistic proposition even if the Levenmouth branch did have six-foot-high trees growing through the track.

Yet such re-openings come at a cost. In 2021, the cost of the Ashington re-opening was estimated to be £166 million. Last August the cost of the line was estimated to be £298 million which is being funded by the DfT, Northumberland County Council, and Network Rail. It has been explained that the reasons for the additional cost of the Ashington re-opening include poor weather and construction inflation.

At £13 million per kilometre, introducing a passenger service on the operational Ashington branch is comparable to the £116 million cost of re-opening the closed 9.7 km Levenmouth branch.

Whatever the cost of the Ashington branch, its new services will no doubt bring significant benefits to local communities especially when the remaining stations are opened. Indeed, the promise of the Ashington line is shown by the 50,000 passenger journeys that have been made in its first month. NCC considers that the Northumberland Line will:

• Improve access from towns such as Ashington and Blyth to employment hubs like Newcastle, as well as opening new opportunities for education and travel. 
• Provide a real incentive for potential employers to relocate to and invest in the area.
• Provide vital infrastructure to help deliver the region’s aspirations for population and economic growth. 
• Help to attract visitors and improve local tourism. 
• Enhance public transport connectivity within and beyond the region. 
• Help to reduce congestion and improve air quality on key corridors by moving people away from car travel and onto public transport. 
• Support the delivery of significant growth in sectors such as renewable energy, offshore oil and gas and engineering.

With the train journey taking half the time of the bus journey, it seems most likely that these aims will be achieved. The business case that NCC published in 2019 quantified the benefits of the Ashington line to be worth £70 million per annum for the local economy. Thus, as is almost always the case, the benefits of this new rail service will far outweigh the cost of its provision.

Image credit: David Shirres