Blyth Bebside railway station

Blyth Bebside is a railway station on the Northumberland Line, which is due to reopen in the summer of 2024, and will run between Newcastle and Ashington. The station will serve the town of Blyth and village of Bebside in Northumberland, England.

History
The station was opened on 3 August 1850 by the Blyth and Tyne Railway. The station was situated on the south side of Front Street on the A19. The goods shed was north of the level crossing and east of the running lines; this was closed on 9 December 1963. The station was closed on 2 November 1964.

Reopening proposals
Proposals to reintroduce passenger rail services to the currently freight-only section of the former Blyth and Tyne Railway system have been discussed since the 1990s.

In the early 2010s, Northumberland County Council became interested in the proposals, commissioning Network Rail to complete a GRIP 1 study to examine the best options for the scheme in June 2013. This report was published in March 2014 and was followed in June 2015 with the commissioning of a more detailed GRIP 2 study at a cost of £850,000. The GRIP 2 study, published in October 2016, confirmed that the reintroduction of a frequent seven-day a week passenger service between Newcastle, Ashington and possibly a new terminus to the east, at Woodhorn, was feasible and could provide economic benefits of £70 million with more than 380,000 people using the line each year by 2034. The study suggested that a new Blyth Park & Ride station should be constructed close to the site of Bebside station to serve Blyth due to its proximity to the A189 dual carriageway.

Despite a change in the political leadership of Northumberland County Council following the 2017 local elections the authority continued to develop the project, encouraged by the Department for Transport's November 2017 report, A Strategic Vision for Rail, which named the line as a possible candidate for a future reintroduction of passenger services. Consequentially, NCC commissioned a further interim study in November 2017 (dubbed GRIP 2B) to determine whether high costs and long timescales identified in the GRIP 2 Study could be reduced by reducing the initial scope of the project, but the report failed to deliver on this.

Nonetheless, the county council has continued to develop the project, hiring AECOM and SCL Rail as contractors to develop the scheme on their behalf in 2018 and allocating an additional £3.46 million in funding for a further business case and detailed design study (equivalent to GRIP 3) in February 2019. Revised plans were revealed in July 2019 which were reduced in scope from the 2016 GRIP 2 study and proposed 4-phase project to reduce the initial cost of the scheme. The proposed station at Bebside (now referred to as Blyth Bebside) would have only been added during Phase 2. However, in August 2020, it was reported that these four proposed phases might be merged into a single one.

The North East Joint Transport Committee's bid for £377 million of funding from the UK Government's £1.28 billion Transforming Cities Fund, submitted on 20 June 2019, includes £99 million to fund the reintroduction of passenger services between Newcastle and Ashington, while further work is ongoing to secure additional public and private investment for the project.

The Department for Transport allocated an initial grant of £1.5 million towards the project costs in January 2020 which was supplemented by an allocation of £10 million of funds from Northumberland County Council the following month. This funding enabled AECOM to begin detailed on-site ground investigation works in October 2020. The allocation of a further £34 million of UK Government funding for the project in January 2021 enables the necessary land to be purchased, detailed designs to be prepared and some early preparatory and site works to begin. In January 2021, it was anticipated that the UK Government would fund the remainder of the project cost, estimated at £166 million as of January 2021, once the final phase of design works were completed. However, in April 2021, it was reported that government officials were seeking to reduce the cost of the project as part of the Department for Transport's Project SPEED initiative. It was reported that the cost-saving measures under consideration included dropping the proposed station at Bebside from initial project scope and cutting initial service frequencies from two to one trains per hour. Although Minister for Railways Chris Heaton-Harris later reiterated the UK Government's commitment to opening the new station at Bebside, it remains unclear whether other cost saving measures, such as reducing service frequencies, are being pursued.

A planning application for the proposed new station at Bebside was submitted to Northumberland County Council on 5 March 2021. The submitted planning documents indicate that the station will be located approximately 200 m to the south of the original one, where the line passes through a cutting. The station will have entrances on both sides of the tracks and its two 100 m platforms will be accessed via lifts and stairs from a glass-sided footbridge. A 293 space car park will be provided adjacent to the western entrance while a new cycle path will be created to link the eastern entrance directly to Bebside and Blyth (crossing the A189 road via a new bridge).

Northumberland County Council submitted a Transport and Works Act Order application to the Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps on 26 May 2021, under which they would be conferred certain additional powers deemed necessary for the new stations to be constructed and the line upgraded to carry regular passenger services. The application was approved in June 2022. The new Blyth Bebside station was constructed by the project's primary construction contractor, Morgan Sindall. It is anticipated that the opening date will be in 2024.

Construction of the new station is underway and but is not expected to be ready in time for the line opening in Summer 2024.

Services
Weekday and Saturday daytime services are expected to operate twice-hourly, with an hourly service during the evening and on Sunday, with an end-to-end journey time between Newcastle and Ashington of around 35 minutes. All services are expected to be operated by Northern Trains.

(Expected) rolling stock used: Class 156 Super Sprinter and Class 158 Express Sprinter