Travelling on Saturday 20th December 2025

We're expecting that trains will be busy on Saturday 20th December with Christmas Shopping and Markets in Newcastle in full swing, along with Newcastle United being at home with a 12.30pm kick off at St James Park.

We'd advise to leave extra time for your journey and plan ahead. Trains will be running their usual twice per hour timetable throughout most of the day.

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Whilst Northern would love to add additional capacity on local services, it is tricky as they only have a small number of spare trains to add that capacity and demand is high and not just from the Northumberland Line. The demand for travel will be high on all their local services in the North East, especially over this busy weekend.

On Sunday 21st December, trains are planned to be 4 carriages and this is possible as frequencies across the region are less, which means they have more carriages available. This isn't the same case for weekday and Saturday services when train services are more frequent.

We're also expecting that demand for car parking spaces at stations may also be high, so if you can walk or cycle to your local station, we'd encourage you to do so.