National railway station usage data for 2008-9 has been published today. I've been looking at the figures for Shropshire, which generally show an increase across the county, although some of the halts in South Shropshire have declined.

Total annual entries and exits for 2008-9...
Shrewsbury 1634544
Telford Central 958910
Wellington 499742
Ludlow 295686
Gobowen 193082
Church Stretton 126194
Wem 101070
Craven Arms 104446
Whitchurch 93476
Cosford 75710
Shifnal 101722
Albrighton 78066
Knighton 23054
Oakengates 32738
Prees 8160
Yorton 9052
Bucknell 3508
Broome 1830
Hopton Heath 1270

For the past 5 years, I've divided up the stations into three groups. The data for each year is not exactly comparable, because the way in which the total entries and exits is calculated has changed, but it should show the general trends.

The big ones...



Growth at all three here, with a big jump in 2007/8.

The medium ones...



I'd have expected Gobowen to have gone up, since lots more trains stop there than a few years ago.

and the small ones...



Oakengates has really gone up. I'm not sure why Bucknell is half compared to last year, particularly when compared to the trends at Hopton Heath and Broome. Fewer journeys by commuters or schoolchildren to Shrewsbury this year?

Interesting figures,i wonder what a graph would look like for Baschurch,Hanwood,Hadnal etc.

I wonder what it would look like or even indeed have changed if Dr Beeching hadnt axed the rail network in this country all those years ago? Just a thought.

Thanks for the graphs! B) Your three "leagues" are spot-on IMO. Shrewsbury has breached the 1.6 million mark, Telford almost breaching the 1 million mark, Wellington nearing the half-million mark, and 3 more stations (Wem, Shifnal and Craven Arms) are above the 100,000 mark. Ludlow heading for the "premier league"?

The large increases shown in 08/09 in the usage figures for stations on the Shrewsbury-Wolverhampton line are largely due to changes in the way the data is collected/calculated.

As for Bucknell - it could well be that 2 or 3 people who regularly travelled to/from this station no longer do.

Busiest station without any station facilities is Church Stretton... I wonder if that will ever change? Would be nice to have some manned facilities there like at Ludlow or Gobowen.

Just out of interest, I found that there's a Ludlow station in New York...

http://as0.mta.info/mnr/stations/station_detail.cfm?key=14



:D

There is also a Ludlow Street in Manhattan.

Halfway up Ludlow Street there is an intersection with Broome Street, hence the sign



See the Street View version

Amazing! :D

I did wonder what was behind the increases across the board, since I would have expected the passenger numbers to have dropped slightly, compared to the last five years, because the recession would have affected the number of regular rail commuters.

As Proud Salopian has pointed out, changes on the Shrewsbury-Wolverhampton line are laregely due to the changes in the way in which data is recorded. The number of interchanges recorded at Shrewsbury has halved since 2006. Although I'm sure there are fluctuations year on year, such a large change seems unlikely, so I imagine that it is just a function of the changes in recording method. But it would be interesting to know whether there has actually been a rise in the number of people using Shrewsbury station. I wonder what the effect of the ticket gates is - surely they must have increased the recorded number of entries and exits?

What might be interesting would be to compare the stations in Shropshire with another rural county away from London. Unfortunately I can't think of any particularly comparable county - possibly Worcestershire? It also has a mix of commuter, semi-fast and quiet lines. Cheshire and Staffordshire are complicated by the WCML. Herefordshire only has 4 stations (I think). Possibly Devon or Cornwall? Lincolnshire? Proud Salopian, you know more about this than I do! :)

Hmm! A county similar to Shropshire railway-wise... Worcestershire is probably quite similar. Also Norfolk and perhaps Suffolk? (Norwich is of course a big city and its station has a usage figure of over 4 million though.)

Shropshire is quite unique in terms of its railway network (in England), in that there is quite a nicely defined network within its borders, with numerous routes which feed into the county town, with no major mainlines cutting across (like the West Coast), no large urban areas with its own suburban commuter stations feeding into a large central station, no towns with two stations (like Wrexham... or Worcester), and so on.

I've just had a look re: Herefordshire... yes, that county has only 4 stations! Oh dear! :rolleyes:

Oakengates is an interesting case. There's a free car park (not especiaqlly big) and there have been fairly large developments of housing in surrounding areas, like Hadley and Priorslee.

It is also cheaper to travel by train from Wellington to Oakengates than it is to use the bus. And it is a quicker journey, too.

But Oakengates is less than a mile from Telford Central and only half the trains stop there!

Yes, but Telford Central is a ghastly place. Anything to avoid it, I'd have thought.

To be fair, most Shropshire stations are fairly dreary places. Prees and Bucknell are quite nice though.

Bucknell and Hopton Heath are my favourites... not many trains though! :D Though there is once a year or so steam...

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1373752

Hopton Heath (Shropshire's least used station):

http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/591370

Zzzz! :lol:

On the other end of the scale - the dregs of Shropshire's stations: Craven Arms, Wellington, Telford Central. Mainly because of the scum which hang about them! :ph43r:

Years ago Wellington had a booking office and cafe,does it not have these now?,access to the new bus station might help,also cctv with SOMEONE on the other end.What is it with railway stations and yobs,when i was a youth we used them to catch trains from.S.bury.bus station is almost as bad,if not worse at times.

That's true. But the car parking is free in Oakengates and if you cross the ring road there's a lot of free council car parking, too.

You make a good point, though. I think there should be more trains stopping at Oakengates.

The 18.01 Wellington to Oakengates train is handy. On Wednesdays when I finish work I do a quick shop in Morrisons in Wellington and then dash to the station to get the train to meet my wife from her workplace.

Wellington still has a cafe, called The Platelayer. Very clean, very good food.

There is still a booking office, though a dreaded ticket machine on one platform only, so not much good for disabled people.

The 2009/10 usage figures are out!

http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/server/show/nav.1529

Give me a moment to get through them! :rolleyes:

Premier League
Shrewsbury 1,630,474
Telford Central 972,162

Championship
Wellington 533,368
Ludlow 270,682
Gobowen 193,032

League One
Church Stretton 117,812
Wem 103,370
Shifnal 100,716
Whitchurch 97,122
Craven Arms 95,908
Cosford 84,988
Albrighton 77,240

League Two
Oakengates 37,682
Knighton 23,338

Conference
Prees 8,362
Yorton 8,166
Bucknell 3,798
Broome 1,622
Hopton Heath 680

Also, the 2008/09 data has been revised.

Thanks for putting them in this format.

Stations which have seen a fall:

Church Stretton, Craven Arms (falling below 100,000) and Ludlow - perhaps engineering works (?) on this line knocked the figures down?

Broome and Hopton Heath - though sister stations Bucknell and Knighton went up

Yorton

Shifnal (very slight)

I would imagine that with the end of W&S Cosford will be the biggest loser now.

If only we had those 'short cut' lines now,ie.Wellington to Crew,and Stafford,the populations along these routes has grown ten fold since the 60s.

This is SO true!

Mind you there was talk of relaying the Wellington to Stafford line, recently.

Not going to happen though. The genius people who are in charge have allowed quite a bit of housing to be built on the Newport stretch of the line, and the new roads around Newport also block the line too.

Getting passenger trains (and not heritage trains - public trains) down to Ironbridge would be nice. Again, far too sensible to happen.

Re-opening Baschurch should be physically possible without too much disruption, at least. Although my understanding is that it's not just a case of building a station there - the signalling between Shrewsbury and Gobowen would need to be upgraded for higher traffic levels.

Re-opening Baschurch would make sense and could easily be done. Shrewsbury-Chester needs resignalling anyway.

However Network Rail are notoriously useless when it comes to this sort of thing. Unless a devolved government is involved, forget it. I found it funny how when those floods hit (somewhere in Lancashire/Cumbria???) they managed to build and operate ad hoc stations with new train services within days. Shows things can be done when the usual thousands of layers of bureaucrats and jobsworths are ignored.

As for the Shrewsbury Parkway idea. It's something Shropshire Council have in mind. Need I say anymore?