Northumberland Line reopening: progress updates

[Xenophon PCDGS]

Separate trackbed/ballast/drainage investigations may well also be required depending on the state of the track

Casting my mind back a couple of years, was the trackbed deformation at Hatfield and Stainforth caused by colliery workings?

 

[MarkyT]

Casting my mind back a couple of years, was the trackbed deformation at Hatfield and Stainforth caused by colliery workings?

I think in that case it was shifting spoil, the waste from many decades of mining, that had been piled up close to the railway rather than any subterranean phenomenon.

 

[swt_passenger]

BBC article copied from the EWR thread, the latest “Northumberland Line” funding has been announced, £34 million.

“The new £34m investment, which aims to reopen the line between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Ashington, will include funds for preparatory works and land acquisition.
There are plans for new stations at at Ashington, Bedlington, Blyth, Bebside, Newsham, Seaton Delaval, and Northumberland Park, in North Tyneside, as well as upgrades to the track and changes to level crossings where new bridges or underpasses were needed, the Department for Transport said.”

(I wonder if listing Blyth and Bebside separately is a BBC or DfT error?)

East West and Northumberland rail lines get £794m boost

The government says the funding will connect "left-behind" communities.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[WatcherZero]

£34m is about 20% of the total required for the project.

 

[swt_passenger]

£34m is about 20% of the total required for the project.

As @Bald Rick suggested in the EWR thread it’s the final step before full construction. Probably almost certain to happen now.

[…]
3) Northumberland Line - this is the penultimate decision point. This enables progression of all design, consents (it needs an order under the Transport and Works Act), enabling works, land purchase etc. Effectively this is the level of work that EWR had been previously granted. This is good news, and shows the project is going well - had there been some major issues Government could have said “no”. However, evidently Government is unwilling to commit to the full cost of reopening until it is fully understood and the consent process is substantially complete. You wouldn’t want to commit to a project at, say, £150m and then find that the consents process requires you to build lots of bridges you hadn’t allowed for, meaning it now costs £300m.

 

[snowball]

(I wonder if listing Blyth and Bebside separately is a BBC or DfT error?)

Looks like the BBC wrongly assumed the DfT had made a mistake in not putting a comma between the two:

Transport Secretary launches £794 million investment to boost rail links in north and south

Final round of Restoring Your Railway Ideas Fund opens, inviting proposals to restore railway lines, services and stations that were closed to passengers in 1964.

www.gov.uk

 

[swt_passenger]

Looks like the BBC wrongly assumed the DfT had made a mistake in not putting a comma between the two:

Transport Secretary launches £794 million investment to boost rail links in north and south

Final round of Restoring Your Railway Ideas Fund opens, inviting proposals to restore railway lines, services and stations that were closed to passengers in 1964.

www.gov.uk

Ah well spotted. It could be worse, they might have separated Seaton and Delaval to big it up even further...

 

[Oxfordblues]

Todays announcement should be a huge embarrassment for the Labour Party. Let's look at the timeline:

Thursday 15 October 1964: Labour wins the general election
Monday 2 November 1964: Labour shuts the Blyth & Tyne to passenger trains
Labour's new Transport Minister Thomas Fraser had two weeks to save the service and did precisely nothing.

Thursday 12 December 2019: Tories win "safe" Labour stronghold of Blyth Valley
Saturday 23 January 2021: Tory government announces massive investment to restore the service.

In all their years in power Labour had numerous opportunities to reopen the Blyth & Tyne but never bothered because they were "guaranteed" victory in all the Red Wall seats. (I write this with a sense of shame as a Labour supporter.) It is a tragedy that the only way the people of Blyth Valley could get their trains back was by voting Tory!

 

[Doctor Fegg]

I think Labour is probably more concerned with public perception of their last few years than with what "Red Wall" voters might think of their 1964 Transport Minister.

But maybe Bedlington voters really bear a grudge.

 

[edwin_m]

Todays announcement should be a huge embarrassment for the Labour Party. Let's look at the timeline:

Thursday 15 October 1964: Labour wins the general election
Monday 2 November 1964: Labour shuts the Blyth & Tyne to passenger trains
Labour's new Transport Minister Thomas Fraser had two weeks to save the service and did precisely nothing.

Thursday 12 December 2019: Tories win "safe" Labour stronghold of Blyth Valley
Saturday 23 January 2021: Tory government announces massive investment to restore the service.

In all their years in power Labour had numerous opportunities to reopen the Blyth & Tyne but never bothered because they were "guaranteed" victory in all the Red Wall seats. (I write this with a sense of shame as a Labour supporter.) It is a tragedy that the only way the people of Blyth Valley could get their trains back was by voting Tory!

If the closure was 18 days after Labour took power then I suggest the decision was made by the previous government.

I was involved in an early feasibility study into re-opening this line in 2012 or 2013, when the client was the Labour local authorities. More cash could have been forthcoming from the Tory government at that time to progress it faster.

 

[geordieblue]

Todays announcement should be a huge embarrassment for the Labour Party. Let's look at the timeline:

Thursday 15 October 1964: Labour wins the general election
Monday 2 November 1964: Labour shuts the Blyth & Tyne to passenger trains
Labour's new Transport Minister Thomas Fraser had two weeks to save the service and did precisely nothing.

Thursday 12 December 2019: Tories win "safe" Labour stronghold of Blyth Valley
Saturday 23 January 2021: Tory government announces massive investment to restore the service.

In all their years in power Labour had numerous opportunities to reopen the Blyth & Tyne but never bothered because they were "guaranteed" victory in all the Red Wall seats. (I write this with a sense of shame as a Labour supporter.) It is a tragedy that the only way the people of Blyth Valley could get their trains back was by voting Tory!

This isn't entirely true. Recent development on the Northumberland Line began around 2016, when the Tories took control of Northumberland CC. Since then progress has been fairly swift in railway terms and the government have provided funds for reopening, but Chris Grayling had already visited the line before Johnson even became PM.
Whilst the national political scene undoubtedly has a bearing on this, the local scene is more important (and, as a Labour member myself, I do need to admit that Labour in southeast Northumberland have been a busted flush for some time).

 

[Bald Rick]

Todays announcement should be a huge embarrassment for the Labour Party.

In the “embarrassment for the Labour Party” scale, this barely registers on the seismometer. It is irrelevant.

 

[WesternLancer]

In the “embarrassment for the Labour Party” scale, this barely registers on the seismometer. It is irrelevant.

No, but it is the case that with years in power from 97 nationally, and locally, they could have done something about it - but did little to nowt - along with other plausible schemes, demonstrating little interest in such new line re-openings. Ivanhoe (serving marginal seats too) being an example. And again I say this as a supporter of the Labour Party.

 

[Bald Rick]

No, but it is the case that with years in power from 97 nationally, and locally, they could have done something about it - but did little to nowt - along with other plausible schemes, demonstrating little interest in such new line re-openings. Ivanhoe (serving marginal seats too) being an example. And again I say this as a supporter of the Labour Party.

I think it is often over estimated, significantly, how many people choose how to vote based on Government railway policy.

 

[edwin_m]

I think it is often over estimated, significantly, how many people choose how to vote based on Government railway policy.

The current government seems to think it is a vote-winner. Or at least it's part of the general mood music of taking us back to the 50s, which was remembered as quite a nice era by some who weren't there.

 

[Bald Rick]

The current government seems to think it is a vote-winner.

In certain parts of the world, to deliver the ‘levelling up’ agenda. In my (cynical) opinion, it is one of the few levers they can pull to deliver what might look like ‘levelling up’.

 

[Glenn1969]

They could of course spend money in Manchester where it was needed 10 years ago. This project is a fraction of what that one would cost so you could call it a quick win. But I still think these announcements are political spin to divert attention away from their shambolic handiing of the pandemic. Welcome though the funding is.

 

[WesternLancer]

I think it is often over estimated, significantly, how many people choose how to vote based on Government railway policy.

I totally agree, but there is a clear value in people who live in places being able to access work opps in larger cities - which creates economic benefits - and allows people to access cheaper housing etc. I see this ref Robin Hood Line. Doubt it gets votes directly tho, or not many. But not everything govts do is just vote driven......believe it or not.

 

[BrianW]

The current government seems to think it is a vote-winner. Or at least it's part of the general mood music of taking us back to the 50s, which was remembered as quite a nice era by some who weren't there.

Ah yes, those were the days; we had never had it so good. From the BBC 'On this day' for 20 July 1957:

The British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, has made an optimistic speech telling fellow Conservatives that "most of our people have never had it so good".
The prime minister was speaking at a Tory rally in Bedford to mark 25 years' service by Mr Lennox-Boyd, the Colonial Secretary, as MP for Mid-Bedfordshire.

And the North-east- the 'fiefdom' of the Lord Hailsham of St Marylebone, aka Quintin Hogg, as referred to here in his Wikipedia encomium:

He was also given a number of special assignments by Macmillan, becoming Minister with special responsibility for Sport from 1962 to 1964, for unemployment in the North-East between 1963 and 1964 and for higher education between 1963 and 1964. Hailsham, who had little interest in sports, thought little of his appointment as de facto Sports minister, later writing that "[t]he idea of a Minister for Sport has always appalled me. It savours of dictatorship and the nastiest kind of populist or Fascist dictatorship at that."

My parents got our first TV in the 1950s, and a huge fridge (huge on the outside, small on the inside- a reverse Tardis, with plastic teak veneer to go in the 'parlour'- no room or electric socket in the scullery; our first council house.

We never had clogs!

 

[edwin_m]

I totally agree, but there is a clear value in people who live in places being able to access work opps in larger cities - which creates economic benefits - and allows people to access cheaper housing etc. I see this ref Robin Hood Line. Doubt it gets votes directly tho, or not many. But not everything govts do is just vote driven......believe it or not.

That was the basis of the case for the Todmorden Curve project, allowing a service from Burnley (in particular) into Manchester.

 

[WesternLancer]

My parents got our first TV in the 1950s, and a huge fridge (huge on the outside, small on the inside- a reverse Tardis, with plastic teak veneer to go in the 'parlour'- no room or electric socket in the scullery; our first council house.

We never had clogs!

Splashing out on a fridge before kids even had shoes! I don't know......

 

[Novern Uproar]

1997. A big fat Labour majority with a lot of public goodwill. Thirteen years in power & the amount of railway line and station re-openings was pitiful. As a Labour party activist for much of that period & a member of the NUR, it was indeed embarrassing. Still maybe I should have known better. I can recall older work colleagues telling me about how Labour had betrayed them in the 1960's in the Beeching cuts era . . campaigning to save railway lines in my part of the world (East Yorkshire), then on being elected, continuing with the line closures.

 

[Xenophon PCDGS]

That was the basis of the case for the Todmorden Curve project, allowing a service from Burnley (in particular) into Manchester.

The funding for the Todmorden Curve rail project was only half of the funding package, the other being the funding of the Weavers Triangle updating project in the centre of Burnley.

 

[androdas]

Full planning application has been submitted for the new Ashington station on the Northumberland County Council website yesterday. Link: https://publicaccess.northumberland...s.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=QNWSO1QSLQD00

 

[swt_passenger]

Full planning application has been submitted for the new Ashington station on the Northumberland County Council website yesterday. Link: https://publicaccess.northumberland...s.do?activeTab=documents&keyVal=QNWSO1QSLQD00

A couple of years ago, they were proposing to re-use the existing down platform, and have a turnback siding north of the road bridge which would only be used if a freight service needed to pass while the passenger service was timetabled to layover. Looks like they’ve now gone for a revised design with an offline bay platform where all passenger services will be held away from the down line.

However the flip side is the platform would then have to be relocated again if through services beyond Ashington ever get added?

 

[Killingworth]

It has taken a long time, but finally the details are starting to slot into place. The best explanation is here - Design and Access Statement

 

[Kingspanner]

A couple of years ago, they were proposing to re-use the existing down platform, and have a turnback siding north of the road bridge which would only be used if a freight service needed to pass while the passenger service was timetabled to layover. Looks like they’ve now gone for a revised design with an offline bay platform where all passenger services will be held away from the down line.

However the flip side is the platform would then have to be relocated again if through services beyond Ashington ever get added?

Section 10.4.2 of the Design and Access Statement linked to by Killingworth states "The bay track alignment has been designed as not to prohibit future through alignment to the north".

 

[swt_passenger]

Section 10.4.2 of the Design and Access Statement linked to by Killingworth states "The bay track alignment has been designed as not to prohibit future through alignment to the north".

Thanks. I’d browsed through quite a few of the different docs & drawings without actually spotting that. Presumably it would then become a platform loop if that were done?

 

[swt_passenger]

Planning application for Northumberland Park single platform station is online, on the North Tyneside planning site. A fairly straightforward single platform, embankment regraded to make room, stairs and lift to adjacent road bridge:

Planning reference is 21/00299/FUL, direct link to document timed out.

 

[Trackbedjolly]

Tried clicking on this but the website says 'Document unavailable'