Edinburgh rail pass to New Castle

The man in seat 61 website is the place to learn all about train travel in Europe. https://www.seat61.com/

You can check trains between Edinburgh and Newcastle by going to the National Rail website. Trains are frequent and take less than 90 minutes. Prices vary according to departure times. You could just buy tickets at the Waverley station on the day you want to travel. If you want to buy your tickets online, the National Rail site will send you to the appropriate train company website when you click on the train you want. It's too early yet, but you can get an idea by looking for trains on the next week or 2.

I generally book about a month in advance for a trip like this- this will give you access to cheaper Advance tickets.

The train operators on this route are LNER, TPE and CrossCountry. You cam book a ticket for any operator or route of any of the operator sites. The National Rail site aggregates all and pushes you to an operator site to buy your ticket, so is a good starting point.

And just a note that it's Newcastle (one word).

You could tack Durham on as it's close to Newcastle (Cathedral, Castle etc) but neither are an obvious day trip from Edinburgh - personally I would stick to Scotland.

What about a train to somewhere like Pitlochry (you could also drive and have better access to the Cairngorms).

Lumo also run between Edinburgh and Newcastle.

The best fares are usually on TransPennine Express who run the stopping service between the two cities. With Lumo a close second

The 0934 train from Edinburgh is often a very cheap, as is the 1614 back. The 0934 as close as in a week's time has Advance Fares for £7.80 one way (pretty much as low as it goes). The LNER 4 minutes earlier is at least 3x the price.

TPE and Lumo advance fares are almost always available last moment- this morning (for 2 hours time) the 0934 TPE is only £12.10 (and the 0924 Lumo £16.90) whereas the 0930 LNER is £31.90.
Today you can come back on the 1747 Lumo for £14.90- another of the regularly cheap trains.

The best website by far to look at is Scotrail (although you will not use their trains). The reason is that they give split fares (where you use 2 tickets across an intermediate station to save money)- even on a simple journey like that.
And they don't charge commission to do so.

Wow! So thankful I posted my questions. Everyone who responded gave me the information for exactly what I needed. Thanks especially for reminding me Newcastle is one word. My husband’s grandfather immigrated from there and he is so excited to see his old home. I’m grateful for your help.

Do you know what area of Newcastle he was from and if the house is still standing?

A lot of older inner city housing was demolished in the city.

If you are travelling up by train from London (King’s Cross), they call at Newcastle on the way. You might wish to consider breaking the journey and spending a night in the city.
https://www.visitnortheastengland.com/places/newcastle/
https://visitnewcastle.com

Helen- yes, his grandfather lived at Haddricks Mill Public House above what I believe is a pub now. The Brandling Inn?

There’s a Haddricks Mill Road in Gosforth with the pub the Brandling Villa so nice that some the name remains. That’s a good part of the city to have a wander around.

It could also be the Millstone Inn (built 1900, replacing an earlier pub)- the mill in question was a Corn Mill.

Might be worth your while looking at old OS maps on the National Library of Scotland website-https://maps.nls.uk/