Today Trevor Watson and I met Steve Hopkinson, Interim Regional Director at Northern to discuss the long outstanding faulty CIS at Morpeth. Swift action was promised, and indeed by the time I got back to Morpeth, it was working! Let’s hope it stays that way. On the way to Newcastle, I was delighted to be joined at Cramlington by a very large group of Year 5s and 6s from Eastleigh Primary School, on their way to visit the Laing Art Gallery. Congratulations to their teachers for taking them by train. Many of the children told me they had never been on a train before. After meeting Steve, I had a brief meeting with a student from Newcastle Uni doing her dissertation on the impact for Blyth on the Ashington Blyth & Tyne re-opening and then back to see Sarah Kennedy of Northern who is keen to find SENRUG volunteers willing to plant the empty planters at Morpeth Station (if that interest you, please do contact me). A brief visit to Hexham followed to drop off some Railfuture leaflets, where I noticed that this station has not one but two TVMs on each platform – 4 in total – whereas both Cramlington and Morpeth have just one. Then back to Morpeth where by chance, the excited Eastleigh class joined the train again at Newcastle.
