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Revealed: Britain’s busiest train stations in 2023

Surprise, surprise – most of them are in London

Amy Houghton
Written by
Amy Houghton
Contributing writer
Liverpool Street station, London
Photograph: Claudio Divizia / Shutterstock.com
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Whether you’re wedged up against a stranger at Waterloo, packed in like sardines at Paddington or squeezing your way through Liverpool Street, we all know that London train stations get unbearably crowded. In fact it’s just been revealed by the Office for Rail and Road that every single one of the country’s top ten busiest stations are in the capital. 

But what about the rest of the UK’s major rail hubs? Well, coming in at number 11 and taking the crown as the country’s busiest non-London station was Birmingham New Street. A whopping 30.7 million entries and exits were counted at the station between April 2022 and March 2023. 

Leeds followed behind in twelfth place with 23.9 entries and exits while Manchester Piccadilly was close on its heels with 23.5. The only other non-London hub to appear on the list was Glasgow Central in seventeenth place. 

But those numbers are nothing on the overall busiest in the country, Liverpool Street Station in London, which saw a whopping 80.4 million entries and exits. Here’s the top 20 list in full: 

  1. London Liverpool Street: 80,448,194
  2. London Paddington: 59,182,926
  3. London Waterloo: 57,789,780
  4. London Bridge: 47,657,264
  5. London Victoria: 45,563,972
  6. Stratford (London): 44,136,784
  7. Tottenham Court Road: 34,877,768
  8. London St Pancras International: 33,296,120
  9. Farringdon: 31,459,904
  10. London Euston: 31,318,408
  11. Birmingham New Street: 30,726,280
  12. Leeds: 23,964,156
  13. Manchester Piccadilly: 23,558,364
  14. Whitechapel: 23,307,210
  15. London Kings Cross: 23,287,414
  16. Clapham Junction: 20,790,150
  17. Glasgow Central: 20,767,954
  18. Highbury and Islington: 20,601,096
  19. Bond Street: 19,400,416
  20. East Croydon: 18,514,458

Want to curb the crowds this Christmas? Make sure you take a look at which of London’s tube stations are the busiest and which days will be the worst for traffic over the festive period.

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