New Darlington Station is Open!

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:03]A short amusing story to tell you. When I was up here last year for Railway 200 at Sheldon, I got the train home from Darlington Station and I walked past the eastern side of Darlington Station and I went, "Oh, it looks like they're building something new." I wondered what that is. And I then thought no more about it until earlier this year when I was told officially that yes, there's major huge construction works taking place now coming to an end, finishing.

[00:00:25]There's a whole new bit, a whole new side, a massive investment, new platforms, new foot bridge, new everything here at Darlington Station.

[00:00:32]And we're here this morning for a press event to look around.

[00:00:37]Darlington Station is a principal stop on the East Coast mainline where it connects with many local services. The first Darlington station opened in 1841 and has been renamed and resited since then. The current Victorian structure is grade 2 listed and the event today is part of a huge 140 million pound upgrade that improves the reliability of services through a new track layout and improves connectivity and accessibility.

[00:01:01]It's been a major undertaking and many months work for this upgrade to take place. The upgrade includes the construction of a new eastern concourse at the station alongside two brand new platforms and a new bridge over to the existing station. And after all the official speeches had taken place, it was time to head off to catch a train from the new platforms and take a look at this new part of the station. So where all the speeches were is the new uh sort of ticket hall entrance way in.

[00:01:26]And there's this really long corridor down here which leads to uh the gate line here. And to my left in here, I might poke my head in later. Uh there's a huge new car park. That's all what that is in there. But we are heading uh through the ticket barriers which I'm going through right now. And we're going to go I think I see escalators and we'll go to the new platforms uh five and six where there's a couple of trains waiting for us.

[00:01:51]New escalators are there that take you up to the foot bridge to the existing platforms 1 to four. I'm heading through these doors here which take you to five to six. But there's some empty units which are going to be retail spaces.

[00:02:02]There's toilets, accessible toilets and there's lifts there. And then as I say the new bit there goes a lumo train. Uh coming through here out to the new platforms at Darlington.

[00:02:15]I'm just having a fun moment comparing old to new.

[00:02:20]Old old new.

[00:02:25]So we're on to the new platforms at Darlington station. It's a wide island platform track five either side for platform five. Sorry. On platform six there they put in tornado which is parked up over there. Great to see. Uh and here we've got the Darlington named uh LN Isuma train. I think we're about to take a ride down to York. We're about to jump on the train and I'll chat to some people, chat to the guys from Network Rail. Today, this is the press event on the Friday and I think the first services start in 2 days time along with the May timetable change on the Sunday. So, we've just come 2 days before uh trains uh call here. I want to find out what changes with the service pattern cuz it occurs to me if you're used to getting a train from platform 1 or 4, you might have to allow an additional couple of minutes to walk over the foot bridge, if you turn up and you now find that your train is on platform five or six. So, don't be caught out by that. But new platforms and we're going for a ride and on board I chat to Luke from Network Rail and ask about those track layout changes.

[00:03:20]>> Before we made these changes at Darlington, Darlington station was almost a bit of a layby off the main line if that makes sense. So you've got, you know, the the main up and down lines and then you've got all the platforms off to the west side.

[00:03:32]>> Yes.

[00:03:32]>> Uh which isn't so bad for anything in the down direction going north because they're on the the correct side of the layout on the on the west side. They can come in and out of the station platforms more easily. Anything coming south on the upline has to cross over the northbound line into the platforms and then cross over again at the south end of the station. So we put new platforms in on the east side or the up side. So the southbound trains or certainly the Londonbound trains or or cross country and transpenine platform 5 will be for you know southbound kind of long distance trains I guess you could call it. So LNR cross country trans penine um and that means that they because it's on the the east side of the layout don't have to traverse the junction at the north end and the south end. They can just come in straight into the the new platform and straight out again.

[00:04:19]Platform six is a bay platform and that's for anything starting or finishing at Darlington. So local services to to the Middlesbrough area.

[00:04:28]Um >> hang on. So what services will use that?

[00:04:30]What ones that may have previously come in on two or three?

[00:04:32]>> Yeah. Previously services that would start or finish on the bay platforms two and three in the existing station will move across.

[00:04:39]>> So if someone's been using Darlington station for the last 10 years and they've learned that a certain platform is a certain number, it's going to >> there's a bit bit of change. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:46]So it's going to take some getting used to, but >> a bit of a bit of muscle memory has to update itself. Okay. Okay. But I the changes are fairly obvious so that I think people realize something's changing. There's been lots of communication and then the LN station team have been really good at trying to get the message out.

[00:05:01]>> Thank you, Luke. But that was on a quick round trip to York. We left on the new platform 5 and we came back and arrived back on the new platform 5. Time for a look around the station. So we just arrived back in on the new platform 5, but we were heading north. Our train is heading north. So that might be quite a rare movement for a uh in effect a northbound train to use this platform because from next Sunday, today's time, this is will be where all the southbound uh trains will be coming through. And I just want to clarify, we were talking about a minute ago on the train uh by going over to platform 6.

[00:05:31]There's some buffers there. It's a bay platform. What will happen, and I've had this confirmed, is that services from Saltburn, which come through to Darlington, uh every other one, one terminates here and one carries on to Bishop Oakland. And so the one that terminates here will not come into this new uh bay platform of platform 6, thereby not conflicting with the fast trains that are going through. So that's less conflict there. Let's uh let's go for a wonder.

[00:05:58]>> It makes more sense from the foot bridge. If you look here, you can just about see the Isuma parked up on uh platform 5. And then to its left, you've got the fast tracks northbound and southbound coming through. And those are the ones that platform six. now avoid conflict with. And then in the background got original DA station which is where 1 to 4 is. I've just realized the platforms must now go from right to left 6 5 1 2 3 4 rather than say 1 2 3 4 5 6. Hey, if you'd have called the new platform platform 0 and minus one, you could have had 4 3 2 1 0 - one and that that would have that would have been far better.

[00:06:35]>> We need to swap we need to swap the others around in the existing station.

[00:06:39]We'll swap the others around. I do wonder one day because there are platform zeros. Will there one day be a station with a platform minus one? We should have min. That would be sad.

[00:06:46]Let's put >> it to the rail minister to see.

[00:06:48]>> Let's not. No, that would be terrible.

[00:06:50]So this is now the foot bridge going across the tracks. Interesting to note there's a sign there that says Victoria Road and Park Gate, but the new entrance is being called Nisham Road. Our train just down there going over the fast tracks now. And this links the new part of the station to the original part of the station.

[00:07:07]And then the connection to the original station. There's a new staircase here.

[00:07:10]There's some escalators there, but the escalators aren't switched on at the moment. But there's some lifts as well, and that comes out to a brand new staircase here, which brings you down onto what I believe is platform one by the clock. There's a large clock here on platform one. That's where the new staircase is. And this takes you up and connects you over to the new platforms five and six.

[00:07:30]>> Cheers. Take care.

[00:07:33]I've just found through the doors there, there's this very nice waiting room, which sort of feels like it's a lounge.

[00:07:40]It feels like maybe it's a first class lounge, but now I've checked and this is a general waiting room for everyone. So, when you come to the barriers up the escalators, if it's a cold day and you don't want to wait on the platform, you just wait in here and you check your train on the board there and then you just head down when your train is just a couple of minutes away. There's a new car park as well, which I had a quick look in, but it just looks like a car park over 600 spaces. So, let's go back to the new entrance and back into the rather spacious area where we were this morning. Loads of people this morning and now it's emptied out. Although the media press conference person with NR used the word cavernous, it does feel cavernous. There is a travel office/ ticket office over there. Good to see.

[00:08:18]Uh, a couple of ticket vending machines down there. And then as we saw earlier, that long passageway uh down to the impressive new uh gate line and escalators and down to where the new platforms are. I think I'm just going to go outside for an outside view. And that'll wrap up the video.

[00:08:34]So, back outside to where I started this morning. Intriguingly, there's an old foot bridge here, which I remember, I'm sure, years ago had like a plastic canopy on top, and it's been truncated now. I don't think the foot bridge has been used for many years, but the the the roofing has been removed. I think it was a bit unsightly so it looks better now. What does look amazing is the new entrance. Welcome to Darlington station does cutaway shot with the car park there. I'm out in the car park here.

[00:08:58]This is the drop off zone uh shorts day car park nation road there. Over there there's also a cycle rack, bike rack or cycle park as they call it. And it's just all very new and extremely impressive. So the next time you come to or come through Darlington station, you've got this with the new platforms five and six. It just remains me to say thank you to Net Rail, to LNR for inviting me. Uh, and thank you for watching this video. See you next time.

[00:09:20]Cheers. Bye.

[00:09:26]Wonderful.