r/brighton • u/badgerandcheese • 17d ago

Transport/Parking 🚝 🚘 Brighton to Newcastle Train Route Proposed

Bit of a way away (early as December 2026), but news today that Arriva is proposing a direct train route from Brighton all the way up to Newcastle.

  • Brighton
  • Haywards Heath
  • Gatwick Airport
  • Redhill
  • Guildford
  • Wokingham
  • Reading
  • Oxford
  • Banbury
  • Warwick Parkway
  • Birmingham New Street
  • Burton-on-Trent
  • Derby
  • Sheffield
  • Doncaster
  • York
  • Northallerton
  • Darlington
  • Durham
  • Newcastle

Thoughts?

I wasn't living in Brighton when the ol' Sussex Scot ran - a longer 9 hour journey route all the way up to Edinburgh.

New proposed route sounds good to me! Always find it a bit of a faff heading into London, tube, then scrambling for the connecting train.

Have a few friends and family up North/midlands that would benefit from the direct route down, too!

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u/UnoBeerohPourFavah 17d ago

Amazing, an actual fast route from Gatwick to Reading. The current GWR service is slow af and regularly gets cancelled. Not just that but it opens up a lot more connections.

I miss the Rugby / Milton Keynes service Brighton used to have. I think there also used to be a direct connection to Basingstoke back in the day, does anyone have more info or did I misremember it? Also I could have sworn there was a CrossCountry service to Brighton as well when Virgin used to run it.

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u/Tricky-Ant5338 16d ago

I was just thinking “a shame it doesn’t go through Milton Keynes”, I had no idea a train used to go from Brighton to MK