By Jamie Waller, Local Democracy Reporter
A quiet Nottinghamshire railway station is no longer the UK’s least-used after passenger numbers increased slightly.
Elton and Orston station, near Bottesford, had 56 people starting or ending their journeys between April 2022 and March 2023.
This is 16 more visits than the 12 months previously, and now makes it Britain’s third-quietest station.
Just one train stops a day in each direction at the unstaffed site, which serves the villages of Elton-on-the-hill and Orston, and has no waiting room, toilets or seating areas.
The annual figures highlighting the most and least-used stations across the country are from the Office of Rail and Road (ORR).
The previous set of figures, from April 2021 to March 2022, saw Elton and Orston named the quietest station in the country, when it recorded just 40 journeys.
This year, that honour goes to Teesside Airport, Darlington, which had just two entries and exits – but it was closed from May onwards.
Denton in Greater Manchester was open throughout the year and is second on the list of quiet stations, having recorded only 34 people catching trains to or from the station.
Langwith-Whaley Thorns was the only other station in Nottinghamshire to receive less than 10,000 visitors last year, with 9,744.
Nottingham Station was unsurprisingly to most used, with 6.7m journeys starting or ending there.
London Liverpool Street was the most-used station in Britain – it recorded 80.4 million journeys over the period.
The ORR highlights the least-used stations in the hopes of encouraging people to use them.
“Each of the three stations with the lowest usage (Teesside Airport, Denton and Elton and Orston) have historically had low usage. Each of them has appeared on this list more than once in recent years,” it said.
“In previous years, usage at some of the least used stations presented as part of these statistics have greatly increased the following year.
“We understand that highlighting the least used stations within these statistics can encourage people to visit them.”
Passengers near Orston and Elston can catch more frequent trains from the nearby Bottesford or Asklockton stations.
