Thank you, I did!
Managed to catch the 14:17 from Newcastle to Ashington, returned on the 15:30 from Ashington.
As we all know, only Seaton Delaval opened with the branch, along with Ashington. As of Wednesday 22nd, of the remaining stations, two are still essentially building sites (Northumberland Park - extra platform next to the Metro station, as well as Bedlington), but Blyth Bebside is taking shape albeit with quite a bit of work needed, leaving only Newsham as almost complete (name-boards already in place, maybe a month or two left?).
The station at Ashington was a little underwhelming, with just a single four-car platform set aside from the two-track goods route which continues north and east towards Newbiggin. Not much shelter, let alone a station building, but a reasonably big car park. The remains of the original two-platform station which closed in 1964 are still clearly visible. Anyway, the route has been done. Two viaducts across rivers between Blyth and Ashington are perhaps the highlights.
An added uber-geekery bonus was, by virtue of delaying my departure from London King's Cross until 10:45, I was able to ride the Lumo (that's an "open-access" company in competition with LNER) service that by-passes York station (Holgate Junction to Skelton Junction). You know how it is!
However, due to a couple of signalling probs along the way, the train arrived into Newcastle nearly 20 minutes late, leaving barely 10 minutes to change for the Ashington train (14:17), but I made it! Got back to Newcastle by 4pm, and left on LNER by 5pm without any delays heading back to London.
Below are some pictures taken by me yesterday
