1. UK's busiest railway stations, as Waterloo named top with 99million journeys
Nine of the UK’s top 10 busiest stations last year were in London, new figures have revealed with the country’s most crowded station totting up nearly 100 million journeys a year.
Waterloo topped the list as Britain's busiest rail station for the 14th year in a row, with 99.4 million entries and exits in 2016/17.
On average, it means more than a quarter of a million people use the station every day.
Third was commuter hub Liverpool Street which saw 184,000 journeys made a day and fourth was London Bridge with a daily footfall of 131,000.
Fifth was Euston which saw just over 120,000 entries and exits a day.
Birmingham New Street was rated Britain’s sixth busiest station, the only entry outside of London to make the list.
Stratford station, which was ranked sixth busiest last year, dropped to seventh place although its overall footfall rose by over a million.
Top 10 stations with the most interchanges
2. East Croydon - 6,521,665
3. Waterloo - 6,105,768
4. Birmingham New Street - 5,791,187
5. Victoria - 5,734,424
6. St Pancras - 4,584,114
7. Reading - 4,108,908
8. Stratford - 3,872,501
9. Highbury and Islington - 3,837,080
10. Lewisham 3,756,221
Estimates of station usage are based on ticket sales, but the stats exclude certain train operators including the Eurostar and Heathrow Express.
Glasgow Central kept its title as the busiest station in Scotland, with passengers passing through it 32 million times this year, and Cardiff Central was top in Wales with more than 12.5 million entries and exits.
The station with the most interchanges is Clapham Junction, which recorded a mammoth 27.3 million interchanges, more than four times the amount of the next busiest station to change trains at, East Croydon.
Journeys on the Gospel Oak to Barking stretch of the London Overground line plummeted by 10 per cent because of engineering works which saw part of the route closed for four months.
2. The quietest station, until................................
Shippea Hill station: How mince pies gave the least used station a boost
Once the loneliest
rail station in Britain, with just 12 passengers in a year, Shippea Hill
has now seen the biggest percentage growth in Britain.
Visits to the station rocketed 1,200%, according to the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).It said there were 156 entries and exits at the station in 2016-17.
Great British Bake Off finalist Ian Cumming offered mince pies to people who disembarked at the station on Christmas Eve 2016.
The station in Cambridgeshire has just two trains a day, 12 hours apart.
Yet thanks to publicity surrounding its lonely status, the station saw the biggest percentage growth of any on the rail network.
The mince pie event at Shippea Hill attracted 16
people - more than the number that visited the station in the last year
Mr Cumming encouraged people to join him at the station by promising them mince pies, some with a Viennese topping.
That resulted in 16 people visiting Shippea Hill on 24 December, more than it had had in the whole of 2015-16.
Mr Cumming, from Great Wilbraham in Cambridgeshire, said he was "delighted to have skewed some official statistics".
"I had never been there in my life until last Christmas Eve and just decided we should give that station some love," he said.
"There's a good reason it's the loneliest station, though. It's flat. The horizon goes on and on and there's nothing to do there."
He said he took his bicycle and he and his fellow passengers then cycled away as otherwise they would have been waiting 12 hours until 19:27 GMT.
In June 2017, more than 20 people visited as part of a challenge set by Geoff Marshall and Vicki Pipe, who were attempting to visit 2,563 stations in three months.
However, that effort would not count in the 156 visits to Shippea Hill as the figures only go up to the end of March 2017.
The station was first opened in 1845.
The loneliest station in Britain is now Barry Links in Scotland, which had 24 entries and exits. England's quietest station was Teesside Airport, with 30 entries and exits, down from 98 the year before. Shippea Hill is now the 14th quietest station. London's Waterloo station is the busiest with more than 99 million entries and exits.
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