(29 Oct 2021, 10:52 pm)busmanT wrote The restoring your railway fund only has £500m to fund all the reopenings, so it’s no surprise that the £600m bid for Leamside has been rejected. Don’t forget that the north east has got funding for the Northumberland line so we’ve not been totally forgotten.

Typical of regime smoke and mirrors, whilst the Leamside line may have been included in that elimination process, it has been side swiped as it has been the table from 2018 with the DfT plans for increased capacity for the ECML.

Very convenient for Shapps to drop it into a mix where it would suffer instant elimination due to the length and costs of electrification, which was the Network Rail plan submitted in 2018.

It also nails shut the bid for Ferryhill to have a station, that was only remotely possible if the Leamside had a service from Newcastle.

As for the Ashington line, that has been batted about since 1992, and no matter how the regime spins it, the money for that isn't new money at all.,