East Midlanders love a good moan and train services normally come somewhere near the top of the daily gripe list but now our region has some different kind of train news: it’s home to the least-used station in Great Britain.
The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) data revealed Elton and Orston station in Nottinghamshire had taken the title when they published data revealing station usage across the country between April 2024 and March 2025 last week.
The ORR measured the most and least-used stations in Great Britain based on the number of entries and exits with Elton and Orston recording just 68 between 2024 and 2025. This figure is primarily estimated from ticket sales data.
The station, located in between two villages, is served by only one train per day in each direction between Mondays and Saturdays. On weekdays, one train stops on the way to Nottingham at 7.04pm and a second travels back to Skegness at 5.12pm. The trains run at 5.57am and 5.10pm on Saturdays and no trains run on Sundays.
The EMR website page for the station describes it as being ‘served by a very sparse train service, currently only one train a day in each direction.’
Passengers are recommended to use nearby Bottesford or Aslockton instead.
Elton and Orston is unstaffed and has no seating area or a toilet.
The stop dates back to July 1850 when the first passenger trains were introduced on the then Ambergate, Nottingham, Boston and Eastern Junction Railway.
The station gradually fell out of regular use and the only building still standing is a small brick-built shelter from the 1980s.
Other lonely stations from 2024/25 include Shippea Hill in Cambridgeshire (76 entries and exits) and Ince and Elton in Cheshire (98).
Last year’s least used station, Denton in Manchester currently sits at fourth after the number of entrances and exits remarkably doubled.
Britain’s busiest station, for the third year in a row, was London Liverpool Street beating out other London hotspot’s of Paddington, Waterloo and Tottenham Court Road. The estimated number of entries and exits for the station was 98million, up 3.7 per cent from 94.5million.
Outside London, was Birmingham New Street (36.6million), Manchester Piccadilly (27.4million) and Leeds (27.3million).
