Cowpen Lane level crossing

How often it closes

On today’s timetable, Cowpen Lane crossing is predicted to be closed for about 4 h 49 min between 06:00 and 22:00, across roughly 64 closures. The longest single predicted closure is 11 minutes. Freight paths scheduled “as required” (most don’t run on any given day) aren’t counted here; when one does run, the live timeline above shows it.

Longest closure so far today: 5.7 min (09:01–09:07, 2 trains), timed from trains actually seen on the signalling wire: the window edges use the same per-type margins as the forecast, since barrier positions aren't in any feed we can read.

Worst times to cross today

Closures cluster around 08:23–09:23 in the morning and around 12:54–13:54 in the middle of the day. Gaps between closures are longest outside those windows. Other days run a different timetable, so the peaks move.

About this crossing

The crossing is on Wolviston Back Lane in Cowpen Bewley, County Durham.

Cowpen Lane is a manually-controlled barrier with obstacle detection crossing (MCBOD) on the Down–Hartlepool PD Ports FL line (North and East route · ELR LEN3). An obstacle-detection system scans the crossing and confirms it is clear before the barriers lower automatically. Forecasts here combine the working timetable with live train-movement data (and live signalling where the crossing has it), so they reflect actual running including delays and freight, though they can still be wrong when the network is disrupted.

We score this page against what actually happened on the railway: over the last 7 days that covered 520 trains through this crossing.

100.0% of observed passes were being warned about on this page when they passed, and 97.1% of the warnings we could verify came true.

Typical timing error was ±1s (9 in 10 within 10s). This scores when trains pass: barrier movements aren't in the public feeds we can score against.

Full accuracy report →