Proposals to reintroduce passenger rail services to the then freight-only section of the former Blyth and Tyne Railway system have been discussed since the mid to late 1980s. 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. 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. The GRIP 2 study, published in October 2016, confirmed that the reintroduction of a frequent seven-day a week passenger service between , and possibly a new terminus to the east, at , was feasible and could provide economic benefits of £70 million with more than 380,000 people using the line each year by 2034. This study suggested that though Newsham station should be reopened to serve the village itself,
Blyth would be better served by a dedicated
park and ride station near to the former site of
Bebside station which would be closer to both the town centre and the
A189 dual carriageway. Despite a change in the political leadership of Northumberland County Council following the
2017 local elections the authority continued to develop the project, 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. 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. 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 (equivalent to GRIP 3) to reduce the initial cost of the scheme. Under the £90 million Phase 1, 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, while further work is ongoing to secure additional public and private investment for the project. The
Department for Transport allocated an initial grant of £1.5 million towards the project costs in January 2020 which was supplemented by an allocation of £10 million of funds from Northumberland County Council the following month. This funding enabled AECOM to begin detailed on-site ground investigation works in October 2020. 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. In January 2021, it was anticipated that the UK Government would fund the remainder of the project cost, estimated at £166 million as of January 2021, once the final phase of design works were completed. However, in April 2021, it was reported that government officials were seeking to reduce the cost of the project as part of the
Department for Transport's Project SPEED initiative. It was reported that the cost-saving measures under consideration included and cutting initial service frequencies from two to one trains per hour and dropping the proposed new station at Bebside from initial project scope Northumberland County Council submitted a
Transport and Works Act Order application to the
Secretary of State for Transport Grant Shapps on 26 May 2021, under which they would be conferred certain additional powers deemed necessary for the new stations to be constructed and the line upgraded to carry regular passenger services. If approved, the new
Newsham station will be constructed by the project's primary construction contractor,
Morgan Sindall. Main
Northumberland Line construction began in early 2022, However after delays the final opening date was not announced until February 2025 by Northumberland County Council with the station opening on 17 March 2025. == Services ==