Seaton Delaval railway station

The station opened on 28 August 1841 by the Blyth, Seghill and Percy Main Railway. The station was situated on the A190 Station Road, south of the level crossing. After the footbridge subsided in 1940 due to a wartime barricade, all of the trains used the down platform. The principal goods traffic was bricks; this ceased in 1963. The station was closed to passengers on 27 June 1964 and closed completely on 7 June 1965.[1]

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.[2][3][4]

In the early 2010s, Northumberland County Council (NCC) 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.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7] The study suggested that due to the short distance between the former stations at Seaton Delaval and Seghill only one, rather than both, should be reopened.[8]

Despite a change in the political leadership of Northumberland County Council following the 2017 local elections[9] the authority continued to develop the project,[10] 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.[11][12] 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.[13]

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[14] and allocating an additional £3.46 million in funding for a further business case and detailed design study[15] (equivalent to GRIP 3)[13] in February 2019.[15] Revised plans were revealed in July 2019 which were reduced in scope from the 2016 GRIP 2 study and proposed 4-phase project[16] to reduce the initial cost of the scheme. The revised plans appear to suggest that Seaton Delaval, rather than Seghill, had been selected for reopening but, even on its own, Seaton Delaval was to be excluded[16] from the initial £90 million phase [15] and was only to be reopened during Phase 2 of the project.[16] In Phase 4 it was proposed to add a passing loop in the vicinity of the station[16] to enable the introduction of a half-hourly passenger train service.[14] However, in August 2020, it was reported that these four proposed phases might be merged into a single one.[17]

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,[18] while further work is ongoing to secure additional public and private investment for the project.[19]

The Department for Transport allocated an initial grant of £1.5 million towards the project costs in January 2020[20] which was supplemented by an allocation of £10 million of funds from Northumberland County Council the following month.[14] This funding enabled AECOM to begin detailed on-site ground investigation works in October 2020.[21] 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.[22] The UK Government is expected to fund the remainder of the project cost, estimated at £166 million as of January 2021, once the final phase of design works are complete.[23]

It is anticipated that the main construction phase might begin as early as June 2022,[14] enabling an opening date in 2024.[23]