What a Difference a Year (and a Half) Makes!

This photo was taken this morning from almost the same place as my blip on 5th March last year, which was taken a few months after work had begun to divert a footpath from a pedestrian level crossing over a railway (the "Palmersville Dairy Crossing") to an underpass (you can just see the entrance to the underpass near the centre of the photo). The work took far longer than expected but they've made a lovely job of the landscaping. I was sad at the time about trees being demolished, but lots have been newly planted (some nearby, at the far side of the underpass, featured on my blip on Wednesday) and once they've grown it'll look splendid.

The extra shows the new underpass better.

As I mentioned in my blip last year, the reason for the work is the anticipated re-opening of the Newcastle-to-Ashington Line ("Northumberland Line") to passenger trains: since the Beeching era it has only had a few freight trains on it but soon it'll have a half-hourly passenger service.

[PS. Madwill (see below), ever the observant one, has raised a query which prompted me to look more carefully at the "before" photo - and I've realised that I messed up with my description! It's correct that the older photo was taken from the same spot but in the other direction! So it's looking towards the Metro line - hence the overhead power lines which he thought must have been removed. (The Metro line runs parallel to the Northumberland Line at that point so the path crosses one then the other, with a curve in the path between them - and there's been an underpass under the Metro line for years.) It's amazing how similar it looks to the view in the other direction, but teacher says I must take more care with my blips!]