The new Grand Central sponsored passenger lounge at Hartlepool station will be open from tomorrow. It will be available to all travellers whenever the station is staffed and includes phone charging points and USB connections.

The construction of the new station in Horden is well underway with the council already completing the car park phase. The final construction phase comprising of the platforms and overbridge will be commencing in January.

There is to be a community information event scheduled for Tuesday 17 December from 3.00pm to 7.00pm designed to enable interested parties to question representatives of Storey Construction who are building the platforms and Northern trains who will be operating train services and managing the station. Members of the Durham Council’s team leading on the project and Network Rail will also be in attendance.

The event takes place at Horden Social Welfare Centre, Seventh Street, Horden , SR8 4LX.  Everyone is welcome to attend.

The new winter timetable starts this Sunday 15th December. There appears to be little change to Northern services along the Durham coast. TPE however introduce a completely new timetable with trains extended from Middlesbrough to Redcar Central. There are generally good connections at Thornaby for trains from Manchester into northbound coastline services but a wait of around 35 minutes going in the opposite direction.

Grand Central trains similarly show only changes by the odd minute with the exception of the first weekday departure from KX which now departs 21 minutes later Monday to Friday but 18 minutes earlier on Saturdays. No sign of the additional services yet.

However be aware of major changes to the Grand Central timetable most weekends during January and February because of East Coast mainline engineering work. In particular there are no GC trains at all over the weekends of 25-26 January or 29 February-1 March due to further blockades of Kings Cross station for track and signal remodelling.

Timetables can be accessed as follows

Northern No 2 (Durham Coast)

Grand Central (All services)

GC January Engineering alterations

TPE (Liverpool/Manchester to North East/Edinburgh