With the Northumberland Line due to reopen to passengers next summer, PAUL BIGLAND explores the railway and its infrastructure to grasp the scale of the construction work
When RAIL offered me the opportunity to take a trip on the Blyth and Tyne network in Northumberland, to see progress in bringing passenger trains back for the first time since 1964, I jumped at the chance.
I’d not visited the routes since December 1989, 34 years ago when the area still had a thriving freight network, albeit one in steady decline due to the retreat of the industry it was built to serve - coal, both mining and burning.
In those days, there was a busy locomotive depot at Blyth Cambois in the shadow of the massive Blyth A and B coal-fired power stations, while the nearby Lynemouth colliery (one of Britain’s largest) and power station, plus the adjacent Alcan smelter and import berth at Blyth, all provided business for the railways, as did MGR trains from the Durham coalfields and the Butterwell opencast mine north of Ashington.
The massive wooden coal staithes at Blyth, which had been used for loading coal into ships, still existed, but had fallen into disuse a few years earlier. They featured in the iconic 1971 film Get Carter, starring Michael Caine.
The Blyth and Tyne got its name from the Blyth and Tyne Railway, which was established by an Act of Parliament in June 1852.
It unified a number of private railways and waggonways in the area to improve moving coal from the Northumberland coalfields to the port of Blyth and the River Tyne.
The B&T became part of the North Eastern Railway in 1874, but has managed to retain its identity to this day, although parts of the network have closed or been taken over by the Tyne and Wear Metro.
Since my last visit in 1989, the decline in traffic has been massive.
Lynemouth colliery closed in 1994 after an underground fire.
Cambois depot closed in September of the same year, with the site being flattened between 2006-10 along with the nearby West Staithes yard.
Blyth A and B power stations closed in 2001, and the Alcan smelter in 2012.
Opencast mining finished later that decade, while Lynemouth power station has been converted to biomass and no longer accepts traffic by rail, although pa
