Overview

• Engineers discovered urgent structural damage to a County Durham bridge near Chester-le-Street early on August 10, leading National Rail to suspend all Darlington–Newcastle services until at least 13:00 for emergency repairs.
• Rail replacement buses are running between Newcastle, Durham, Darlington and York to carry affected passengers along the closed route.
• Passengers can use their existing tickets at no extra cost on a wide range of alternative services from CrossCountry, LNER, TransPennine Express, Lumo, Northern and other operators.
• Separate engineering works north of Newcastle between Newcastle and Morpeth overran until late morning, causing further delays before services began to clear.
• LNER is advising customers to postpone travel between London King’s Cross and Edinburgh until later today as bridge repairs continue.