please empty your brain below
Fascinating synopsis, thank you.

IslandDweller | 05.12.25 - 8:06 a.m. | #

"Teesside Airport ((...)) it's hard to see anyone stumping up for repairs."

There's at least long-term discussion with identified and secured funding to the contrary.

Chris | 05.12.25 - 8:22 a.m. | #

For more on the extraordinary goings on at Altnabreac, see ALTNABREAC UNCOVERED
Unfortunately this channel will be taken down tomorrow (saturday).

Also Ballybannon Uncovered.

There are several separate legal cases, with the next day in court being next Monday (8th). This relates to the use ofm a level crossing 600 yrads from their house).

timbo | 05.12.25 - 8:33 a.m. | #

I wonder what is the "averagely least used station" - one that has appeared constantly in the list for recent years but never topped it?

And the same for the most average station right in the middle of the numbers.

Into the data we look.

P | Homepage | 05.12.25 - 8:52 a.m. | #

There's talk of converting the Denton line to a Metrolink tram link between Ashton and Stockport so the station's days on this list could be numbered.

Scott | Homepage | 05.12.25 - 9:01 a.m. | #

Stansted being a top 10 flow justifies the work to make it contactless which is why the recent delay is disappointing. Especially since workarounds to support contactless could have been put in place years ago.

There is a newish YouTube channel arguing the case to scrap Lioness line completely (or radically alter) and revamp/improve Bakerloo service to take over the traffic. South Hampstead station would likely trend to zero if that happened.

dg writes: a terrible YouTube channel.

MilesT | 05.12.25 - 9:40 a.m. | #

Tom McKinney quoted some of these stats on Radio 3 this morning. I wonder if he saw it here.

dg writes: didn't sound like it

daveid76 | 05.12.25 - 9:50 a.m. | #

Northumberland Park is now in the 1 million club, not bad considering it only had its daily trains restored in September 2019 and most of that consists of a shuttle service that doesn't serve zone 1.

Still Anon | 05.12.25 - 9:57 a.m. | #

The Altnabreac story is absolutely wild and well worth checking out if you haven't done so already.

cjw714 | 05.12.25 - 10:05 a.m. | #

How much confidence do they have in the passenger counts, especially at the least used stations? Are the numbers based on ticket sales? eg. if someone boarded with a 'rover' ticket or a season ticket how would the railway be able to count them?

dg writes: see methodology report at foot of post

Eltomzo | 05.12.25 - 11:03 a.m. | #

Altnabreac is fascinating as elsewhere local people normally strive to save their stations rather than the opposite.

kev | 05.12.25 - 11:15 a.m. | #

Pilning not even in the 10 least used. That makes it even more obscure.

TheNewNo2 | Homepage | 05.12.25 - 11:56 a.m. | #

I don't think the Altnabreac Two want the station closed (especially as they do not own a road-legal car). The problem is that they think they own it, as well as the adjacent house, and want Network Rail to pay them for access for maintenance.

Possibly at the root of this is that there are plans to set up a freight facility at the station to load locally-harvested timber. As there is no longer a siding there this would have to be done on the running line, at night when no passenger trains are running. Planning permission was granted in 2021, shortly before he bought the property. A good conveyancing solicitor would have spotted this.

But he did his own conveyancing.

Timbo | 05.12.25 - 12:02 p.m. | #

I looked through the data yesterday looking for the busiest two-platform station only to find, of course, that the Elizabeth line kills that line of enquiry. West Ham being in the Top 50 is impressive however.

For the London Terminals crowd I note that City Thameslink is just outside the Top 50 too (along with the two already mentioned).

Michael T | 05.12.25 - 12:21 p.m. | #

Grr.. Altnabreac is a nasty marvel of the modern world and its current ragebait watchword. Nonsense spun up from thin air in the absolute middle of nowhere which, without access to Youtube, Facebook etc would deservedly remain an odd but minor local issue settled with dull, uncontroversial legal process, allowing locals to complain about non-local people doing non-local things. At best it could have been a gentle eyebrow-twitcher on page three of the beforetimes Daily Telegraph, featuring the dead dog angle. But YouTubeEtc catapults it towards being an instant just-add-water cesspit of sovereign citizen pedo conspiracy nonsense. It’s diverting for a few minutes but the world is made worse with every click.

jpmac | 05.12.25 - 12:27 p.m. | #

Interesting that the updated National Rail Conditions of Travel, introduced last month, prevent most tickets being used for "Break of Journey" on the TfL-owned part of the Elizabeth Line. It does point to its odd status, as part of National Rail and not part of National Rail (Schroedinger's railway line, perhaps?).

16.5 Tickets valid for travel across London using Transport for London services do not entitle you to break your journey on London Underground, the Elizabeth line between London Paddington and Stratford and between London Paddington and Abbey Wood and/or the Docklands Light Railway, unless your Ticket is a Season Ticket or a travelcard covering the Zones in which you are travelling.

Man of Kent | 05.12.25 - 1:37 p.m. | #

While the Elizabeth line stations have distorted the data in recent years, there's one Liz station that clearly has not seen the boom effect: Reading.

What is going on there? Why are its figures growing slower than not only Liverpool (which has knocked it out of the top-10 outside London) but similar places in the South East which function as destinations for traffic in their own right, not just places where most of the traffic is to/from London, seem to be growing faster.

Si | 05.12.25 - 1:39 p.m. | #

Placement of Tottenham Court Road is crazier when you think it only has 2 platforms. There is only one station outside London that has more passengers than a single platform at TCR.

Dave Jones | 05.12.25 - 1:53 p.m. | #

The Crossrail number are slightly making a mockery of the National Rail stats now, but I'm not sure what the solution is.

Mikey C | 05.12.25 - 2:14 p.m. | #

Crazy how Waterloo was so close to hitting 100m before Covid and has basically seen a wipeout of just under 20m journeys a year, presumably because of flexible working.

Sean | 05.12.25 - 2:44 p.m. | #

Closing a station does not involve "a very tough legal wrangle".

All that is need is for the operator to publish its case for closure and invite objections which are then considered by Transport Focus (or London TravelWatch, as the case may be).

This body can, if it wishes, hold a public hearing before making a recommendation to the Secretary of State with whom the decision rests.

No lawyers are involved, because TravelWatch's predecessor decided to exclude them from its hearing into the planned closure of Marylebone (BR) and when this policy was challenged by LB Brent it was upheld in the High Court.

I was involved in various closure proceedings including Broad Street, Westbourne Park (BR), the Watford (Met) branch and various curves in west London used only by the former Cross Country train from Birmingham to Brighton. No "wrangling" - legal or otherwise - occurred.

John Cartledge | 05.12.25 - 3:30 p.m. | #

jpmac - Thank you, huge thank you for describing exactly what is wrong with the world today in that how anyone can broadcast their insane points of view and make so much noise about something which doesn’t need attention. You have summed it up perfectly. And I am ignoring it and just letting it get resolved - which is will do quite soon.

Thank you for being a wonderful voice of reason.

Alan | 05.12.25 - 3:31 p.m. | #

Thanks jpmac for the brilliant description "instant just-add-water cesspit of sovereign citizen pedo conspiracy nonsense".

I assume I can freely quote this in converstion without attribution.

David | 05.12.25 - 5:41 p.m. | #

West Ham to Barking is a joyous journey of one stop on the c2c line, or a long slog on the District.

I believe it is the same gateline for rail and tube on both ends, so not sure they can tell which one you did!

h2g2bob | 05.12.25 - 5:51 p.m. | #

At the risk of complaining that something is wrong because it doesn’t do what I want it to do is there any way of distinguishing between a journey which genuinely begins or ends at a station from one where there is a change or mode from National Rail to another form of rail based transport?
If I get off at Victoria from a southern train and walk to work that counts the same as when I go from Sanderstead to Victoria to Highbury and Islington and get off at Homerton. To me both are one journey- yet the second is counted as three journeys because of the change of mode.
I’d love multi-mode journeys to count as 1 and interchange between modes to count on the interchange total.

Robert Butlin | 05.12.25 - 6:32 p.m. | #

If we're listing other stations that are 'temporarily' closed: IBM, British Steel Redcar, Wedgwood, Barlaston.

Wolf | 05.12.25 - 7:53 p.m. | #

Today's graphic has delivered my first-ever tweet with over 1 million views.

(which is quite amazing after 19 years on what's now a muted depleted platform)

diamond geezer | Homepage | 05.12.25 - 9:36 p.m. | #

I ponder how many different people drive these figures, in the sense that for one traveller using the service every week day, that could create 400 journeys per year. So, for any stations below this number, it might just be one individual for the whole year... The numbers for "least busy National Rail stations" are all even, likely implying return trips.

Nick K | 05.12.25 - 10:04 p.m. | #

Well said, John Cartledge.

Steven Saunders | 05.12.25 - 10:12 p.m. | #

Thank you, Steven Saunders.

Why do so many other contributors elect to hide behind noms de plume?

John Cartledge | 06.12.25 - 12:35 a.m. | #

All the fuss local MPs made about the Wimbledon Loop staying part of Thameslink, and five of its stops are in the least 20 used stations. The line that lost out because of that, the Catford loop, just one. I wish the operators would grow a pair and run the service they know needs more trains.

Matt Sawyer | 06.12.25 - 1:05 a.m. | #

Maybe the noms de plume take their lead from the blog’s author.

David B | 06.12.25 - 6:15 a.m. | #

Matt Sawyer - they can't, simply because of the bottleneck at Wimbledon now, when they built the Trams and the thameslink route lost its Platform 10. the service in both directions now have to share platform 9, and it's impossible to timetable through more train on this route because of this single shared platform.

Clive | 06.12.25 - 8:32 a.m. | #

Three of the least used stations contain an Elton, and the one that was actually opened by Elton is closed forever.

Ewan | 06.12.25 - 10:25 a.m. | #

It would be interesting to know the revenue per station, Tottenham court road has a huge number of passengers but I suspect they average about £5 each whereas Euston has fewer passengers but probably generate 5 or 10 times the revenue each. This data probably doesn't exist though

Mike | 06.12.25 - 10:56 a.m. | #

I think the ORR has the numbers wrong for Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road. You can look at TfL's NUMBAT report which gives passengers by weekday. Add up the number of passengers boarding or alighting the Elizabeth line for each weekday to get a weekly total, then multiply by 52 to get an annual total. You get 24 million Elizabeth line passengers at Bond Street (ORR says 43 million) and 48 million at Tottenham Court Road (ORR says 68 million). Instead, ORR's numbers line up with the total number of passengers exiting and entering the stations, which includes all tube passengers but ignores Elizabeth line passengers transferring to the tube.

Jack | 08.12.25 - 5:28 p.m. | #

Is there any way to combine meaningfully the National Rail and the TfL data to say which is the busiest station taking National Rail (inc Crossrail) and Tube (inc Crossrail) into account?
What is being counted by the NR and the TfL numbers is not totally clear but as I understand it

- If I get an NR train into Waterloo and then interchange to tube journey I count in NR and TfL data towards Waterloo totals??
- If I enter tube at Waterloo without arriving by NR I only count in TfL data towards Waterloo total??

In other words there is major overlap between the NR and TfL totals.

- If you combine the totals for Liverpool St you get 98m + 61m = 159 m
- If you combine the totals for Waterloo you get 70.4m + 77.4m =147.8 m

Liverpool Street still looks like the winner overall, noting there would be a lot of double counting. If you exclude the debatable Elizabeth Line to Tube interchanges counted for Liverpool Street Waterloo probably still would not have "won the war" for true station entries and exits victory but would have been closer.

So can we confidently say "Liverpool Street is the busiest station in the UK"?

John Mac | 10.12.25 - 3:51 p.m. | #











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