Blyth Bebside
Blyth gained a second railway station on Sunday 19 October 2025. Blyth Bebside, on the western edge of the town, joined Newsham to the south west, which opened in March this year. I visited the new station on the opening day, starting my journey at Newcastle Central Station.
The train now departing
The departure board at Newcastle showed my Ashington bound train, displaying the destination of Blyth Bebside for the first time since 2 November 1964.
Arrival
So, 28 minutes after leaving Newcastle, I arrived at the new station. Unlike the previous station openings on the line, there wasn’t much ceremony. Not even a free muffin this time.
Back to basics
Bebside is a basic affair, just two platforms connected via a footbridge. As with all of the other stations on the Northumberland Line, Bebside isn’t staffed.
Where is it?
The new station is handily located close to the intersection of the A189 and A193 roads. Just as with Newsham, it’s on the outskirts of Blyth, about two and a half miles from the town centre. I used this nifty new footbridge to get across the A189. The station can be seen in the background.
Northumberland Line
Blyth Bebside is part of the Northumberland Line project, which will eventually see the opening of six railway stations in south east Northumberland. The trains are operated by Northern Trains. A map of the line is shown below. Note, however, that the lines north of Ashington and west of Bedlington are freight-only.
Construction delays
The project has been beset by delays and cost overruns. When the contract was first awarded in August 2022, it was expected that trains would begin running in December 2023. The line opened a year later than scheduled, on 15 December 2024. I wrote about the opening of the line here.
Staggered opening
The stations are opening in dribs and drabs. Seaton Delaval and Ashington stations opened in December 2024. Newsham followed on 17 March this year, as described here. And then Blyth Bebside on 19 October. The remaining two stations, Bedlington and Northumberland Park, are expected to open in “early 2026”.
When a coal pit becomes a money pit
Engineering issues have been problematic at all of the reopened stations. However, Northumberland Park station has been the hardest hit. Un-mapped coal workings and severe weather have been cited as problems. The North East Combined Authority (NECA) has just had to throw an eye-watering extra £10.9mn at the station project to get it completed.
Famous last words
My train crawled through Northumberland Park on the way to Bebside. This is a slow line, with an average speed of 30 mph. The station looks substantially complete, and so the revised opening date of January 2026 may well be met.
Double the estimate
The extra cash from NECA is only part of the story. Northumberland Council has had to find £10mn towards the overall project. The Department for Transport has contributed an extra £17mn. The Northumberland Line project was originally budgeted at £170mn. But It’s now expected to cost £336mn.
Bedlington station has been dogged by problems
Excuses for the delay in opening Bedlington station have been more imaginative than at Northumberland Park. They’ve included a collapsed stone wall, and a previously undiscovered water pipe. It took four months to fix the pipe. Funny how these sorts of issues always occur AFTER you’ve brought the builders in.
No charge
There are several electric vehicle charging points at Newsham station. When the station opened in March, I noticed that these were under wraps. They still are, seven months later.
But the line is a success story
Despite the delays and cost overruns, the line is a success when measured by the most important metric, passenger numbers. More than 700,000 people have used the service in less than a year. Extra carriages have had to be added to some trains. And that’s before the final three stations have opened.
Rolling stock shortage
Most trains on the Northumberland Line consist of only two carriages. It’s now reaching the stage when four will be needed. However, there’s a limit to what can be done. There’s a nationwide shortage of railway carriages. The line mainly uses Class 158 trains, some of the oldest trains on the UK network. Northern Trains introduced newer Class 195 trains in 2019. But, disappointingly, none of these were allocated to the North East of England. Northern tendered for replacements for its wider fleet in January 2025, but these won’t become available until 2030.
History of the Northumberland Line
All of the stops on the line, with the exception of Northumberland Park, are reopened versions of stations closed in November 1964. This was the height of the “Beeching cuts” era. The stations were all part of the Blyth & Tyne Railway. Bebside opened, along with the line, in 1850. The railway has been in constant use since then. However, between 1964 and 2024 it operated as a freight-only line. The reopened Bebside station isn’t quite on the same site as the original. It’s about 200 metres south of the Front Street/A193 level crossing. The original station was just north of the crossing, next to the Bebside Inn. The inn is still open.
Bebside Colliery
Eight years after the opening of Bebside station, Bebside Colliery was opened immediately adjacent to it. But coal had been mined here long before this. In 1608, mine owner Huntingdon Beaumont built a waggonway to transport Bebside coal to the River Blyth. This long-lost waggonway ran from west to east, at right angles to the present railway. Bebside Colliery closed in 1928, but coal continued to be recovered from the vicinity via opencast workings until the 1960s.
King Coal
As in County Durham, the Northumberland collieries marched eastwards as coal became exhausted in the west. Bates Colliery, just north of Blyth town centre, and less than a mile from the North Sea, opened in 1935. It was the last colliery to mine the Plessey Seam, which was continuously worked for at least 400 years. Bates was one of the casualties of the 1984/85 miners’ strike, closing in 1985.
Visiting the line
Bebside is essentially a commuter station. There’s not very much to see in the vicinity. But I took a 15-minute walk, heading north alongside the A189, to get a view of the magnificent Bedlington Viaduct. The soon-to-be-opened Bedlington station is about 300 metres to the right of the viaduct.
Ticket to Ride
Northumberland Line stations are integrated into the Tyne & Wear Metro ticketing system. Blyth Bebside is in Zone C, as can be seen in the system map below. Passengers will be able to interchange with Metro trains at Northumberland Park station, when that opens.
Service intervals
Bebside is served by trains between Ashington and Newcastle at half-hourly intervals in each direction. Trains are hourly in the late evenings and on Sundays. Ashington is 8 minutes away to the north. It’s a 28-minute journey south to Newcastle.
Timetable change
The line will gain some extra services when the national timetable changes on 14 December. On Sundays, all service will be extended to and from the MetroCentre. This isn’t possible on other days due to capacity constraints at Newcastle.
