Newcastle Central Station (also known simply as Newcastle and locally as Central Station) is a major railway station in Newcastle upon Tyne. It is located on the East Coast Main Line, around north of . It is the primary national rail station serving Newcastle upon Tyne, with local rail services provided by the Tyne and Wear Metro network to which the station is connected to by Central Station Metro station, situated beneath the national rail station. The main line serving the station is the East Coast Main Line from London to Edinburgh via Yorkshire and Newcastle. TransPennine Express maintains a frequent service to Liverpool and Manchester, and CrossCountry provides services to the West Midlands and South West of England. The station is also on the Durham Coast Line which provides commuter connections to Gateshead, Sunderland, Hartlepool, and Middlesbrough. Additionally, the station is served by the Tyne Valley Line to Hexham and Carlisle. Direct destinations from the station include London, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Durham, Birmingham, York, Darlington, Bristol, Reading, and Plymouth. The station opened in August 1850, as part of the then Newcastle & Carlisle Railway and York, Newcastle & Berwick Railway. Now a Grade I listed building, it is located in the city's Grainger Town area, to the west of the Castle Keep. In Simon Jenkins' Britain's 100 Best Railway Stations, the station was one of only ten to be awarded five stars. Construction and opening Conception A scheme for a central station was proposed by Richard Grainger and Thomas Sopwith in 1836 but was not built. The Newcastle and Carlisle Railway had agreed to relinquish their insistence on exclusively using their Redheugh terminus on the south bank of the River Tyne. They agreed with George Hudson on a general station north of the Tyne, near the Spital. Instead of crossing the Tyne by a low level bridge and climbing to the Spital by a rope-worked incline, they would build an extension crossing at Scotswood and approaching on the north bank. They opened this line and a temporary station at Forth, and passenger trains started using that on 1 March 1847. Hudson, known as the "Railway King" was concentrating on connecting his portfolio of railways so as to join Edinburgh with the English network. His Newcastle and Berwick Railway obtained its authorising Act of Parliament in 1845, but for the time being it was to use the