Well Northern & whoever organising the rail replacement really needs to over think absolutely everything

When these works were planned they had said "Rail replacement buses between Ashington & Newcastle"

However it changes closer to the time where the rail replacement was only between Northumberland Park & Ashington. So here's everything that went wrong and how it needs to be improved


1, the coach company E Travel had decided instead of using there Coaches (granted it depends if they have the ramp" that they would use two ford transit minibuses run together as 1 rail replacement bus. Talking to a few people at Northumberland Park on Sunday someone said that a wheelchair user had been denied on Saturday & again on the Sunday due to the E travel ford's not having the cable to accommodate a wheelchair

2, they decided in the best interest to allow the rail replacement to terminate at Northumberland Park instead of going to Newcastle with "tickets accepted on the metro" now I dont know if you saw when Newcastle were at home to Hull on Saturday. Metro had the nice excuse of "driver sickness" so big gaps on the Yellow line from Central to Northumberland Park which resulted in me waiting on a metro for 17 minutes. I asked if any Yellow ones had been through and said one had absolutely 5 minutes before (he was waiting on a airport train which was due in 7 minutes) so they decided in a mind of there own (let's relying on the metro)

3, this was so brought up badly that the councillors have spoken to Northern and now the Northumberland Line (which was to be closed again this weekend) now to run on Saturday & Sunday. The timetable for Saturday is daytime running till 5pm then its a rail replacement AGAIN between Northumberland Park & Ashington. Not Newcastle to Ashington. No you have to rely again on the metro to get you to Northumberland Park then hope and pray that if you have a wheelchair that E Travel dont turn up as your rail replacement

On Sunday however it'll run to its full capacity. Now the works for the weekend just gone were at Benton Junction for the Northumberland Line to be closed. However it seems it was also meant to have work done this week. So my guess is we are probably gonna see that section closed once again to allow them to finish the work as I very highly doubt that they finshed what they needed to do fully

Northern & whoever organised the rail replacement really really really need to think over what happened. I was sat at Northumberland Park for near 2 hours on Saturday and never even seen a full bus load arrive or leave so nobody is actually using it and more people would have just gotten the X21/X22/X7/X8/X9 to complete the journey as it seems the rail replacement was extremely empty