The new East Coast Main Line timetable started today. Technically started yesterday (Sunday) but today (Monday) is the first weekday.. Passengers at Berwick and Morpeth will find less LNER services to London and will have to change at Newcastle in many cases. Morpeth and Cramlington passengers lose the direct through service to MetroCentre, Hexham and Carlisle and must now change at Newcastle, where the train from Morpeth will stand for 55 minutes doing nothing before returning back to Morpeth. But there are some positive developments in the new timetable – more TPE trains between Newcastle and Edinburgh, and the last train from Newcastle to Ashington now running an hour later than previously, at 23:21.
The BBC interviewed me about the LNER cuts in advance a couple of weeks back and my comments were included within a BBC website article published today, the Matt Bailey Radio Newcastle breakfast show (around 07.25 am) and on the 18:30 Look North TV programme. ITV also contacted me this morning and I also appeared in their regional TV news show at 18:00, though neither my name mor SENRUG were mentioned. Still, it made for a busy day.
All major timetable changes have winners and losers, and for this one Northumberland is definitely a loser. Both the BBC and ITV pieces made it clear hat Durham and Darlington are too. But I find it hard to articulate who the winners might be. Newcastle gets a 3rd train to London per hour – yes, but 2 of these trains leave Newcastle within 3 minutes of each other (at 24 and 27 minutes past each hour) so I’m not convinced of the advantage. I see the new timetable as Beeching Axe all over again – concentrate on the big cities and leave people at the smaller stations high and dry. So on the one had we have the Northumberland Line, a year old today, reversing Beeching – and what a success this is proving to be, but the new East Coast Mainline timetable repeating the flawed Beeching philosophy. Let’s hope it won’t take 60 years to reverse.
Sandwiched between all of this were very productive liaison meetings with Stuart Jones from First Open Access and Lumo this morning, and with Alex Jarvis of Northern this afternoon.
