There were problems in the north too. The 1750 ex Glasgow Central-Leeds was delayed by 15 minutes due to trespassers in the Edinburgh earlier. However, due to slack at Newcastle, it was looking hopeful that we'd recover a bit of time.
Then, the signallers managed to pull off a huge cock-up. There was single line running from Heaton to a few miles south of Newcastle Central (a massive distance!) due to engineering works in the station. There was also only one platform in use. While we were rapidly approaching Newcastle station, the signallers put a Voyager into the station from the south, around 5 minutes early! This meant that while the Voyager was hanging around in Newcastle for going on 10 minutes, we were forced to wait at Heaton, gradually getting later and later. By the time the Voyager had cleared the section, we were around 30 minutes late. And, subsequently, we'd managed to make a northbound NXEC service 27 minutes late after it had been 5 minutes early!
So in the end, by putting the Voyager in ahead of us, they managed to make us even more late, heavily delay a train that was previously running early, but ensure that the Voyager arrived into Edinburgh early due to masses of slack :roll:. Had they put us in first, we may have delayed the Voyager a little, but with all that slack (and superior acceleration) it would have easily caught up. Meanwhile, the northbound NXEC train probably wouldn't have been delayed at all.
woth the wait in the end though 
hock
