2-hourly Inter-City Service

There should be an Inter-City service (either East Coast Main Line route or Cross Country route) stopping at Morpeth every 2 hours throughout the day in each direction

Morpeth is the County Town and has a high population concentration within a 3-mile radius. SENRUG believes there is a suppressed demand for inter-city rail travel from Morpeth due to poor public transport connections to Newcastle. Driving to Newcastle station is not an option as the car park is full by 07.00 am each day and with no scope to expand it.

Arriva CrossCountry reduced Monday to Friday services from 4 to 3 each way per day from December 2008.

Inter-City services to be evenly spaced

Co-operation between operators so that inter-City services that do call at Morpeth are evenly spaced, rather than two within 30 minutes and then a 6 hour gap

On occasions, National Express East Coast and CrossCountry trains literally follow each other up the line, with neither operator serving stations in Northumberland. On other occasions, both operators’ services stop at Morpeth. Better utilisation of existing rail assets is required.

Earlier morning London service

The current 07.20 service does not arrive in London until 10.40. A pre 10.00 am arrival in required

Required for business users

National Express are believed to be considering changing the Morpeth stop to the 05.50 train from Edinburgh (Morpeth approx 07.00) that arrives in London at 10.10.

Evening service to London

Required for those wishing to arrive in London for overnight stay prior to early start next morning.

Later return train from London

The current 17.30 from Kings Cross is too early for many business travellers and should be supplemented with a later train. The 19.00 Fridays only service should run Monday – Thursday as well. The existing connection on the 18.20 from London to arrive Morpeth 22.00 will be lost when Arriva CrossCountry withdraw the Morpeth stop on their train from December 2008.

Required for business travellers (the times when the business day finished at 17.00 are long gone!)

Better weekend service to / from London

There is a market for leisure travellers (theatre breaks, weddings etc) and business travellers wishing to reach London on Sunday evening prior to Monday morning meetings. As there is no local service from Morpeth on Sundays, inter-connecting at Newcastle is not possible and these journey opportunities are lost to rail.

Engineering Works

Use local rail services instead of bus substitution. When there are Sunday engineering works between Alnmouth and Edinburgh, inter-City companies could negotiate with the local train company to provide a Sunday service from Newcastle to Morpeth and Alnmouth instead of using busses. If the local train then additionally served all stations a full local Sunday service is then available as per objective 1.2. Overall journey times would still be quicker than by bus.

Passengers dislike bus substitution and whole journey opportunities and future passengers are lost to the rail network