Busy Stations

Network Rail recently announced the UK’s busiest and least busy railway stations in the year to the end of March 2022. Waterloo came out at the top of the list and seven more of the top ten were also in London, along with Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly, though total numbers throughout were well down on pre-pandemic levels. London Euston came in seventh. John Dyer’s picture from around 1958 shows Coronation Class No. 46242 City of Glasgow arriving with the Caledonian.

Elton and Orston station, on the ex-GNR route from Nottingham to Grantham, was at the bottom of the table. I went through Elton and Orston on a recent visit to Grantham. Going straight through it is what most trains tend to do, so its not altogether surprising that Elton and Orston has just 40 station entries and exits recorded over a whole twelve-month period. The current rail timetable for Elton and Orston shows one train a day in each direction, the 07.04 to Nottingham and the 17.12 in the Grantham direction.

I have never been to Elton but I did once have a badminton match at Orston. We played in an old church hall with a single court, just like in the old days before the existence of leisure centres. The match went on late, inevitably, but I remember that because the ceiling was typically much lower in such venues, my normally over-used and predictable drop shot technique came into its own for once. It was a dark, cold winter’s night, and in between games, which turned out to be a lot of the time, we huddled round the only available Calor gas heater. Just down the road, the platforms at Elton and Orston station remained predictably quiet, untrodden and overlooked all the time that we were there.