When one thinks of stations on the tube network, it is the busiest ones that come to mind first: Victoria, Waterloo, King’s Cross, Paddington, London Bridge, Liverpool Street. We know all of these, and more. We’ve probably used them. But there’s one station that I’m almost certain that you’ve never stopped at. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Roding Valley, the least used station on the entire network.

Found on the Hainault loop of the Central line, the tiny station boasts around 260,000 passengers a year, compared to Waterloo that has 90,000,000 a year. This is mostly due to its location and tiny catchment area, meaning only 700 or so people use it each day. To compare this further, roughly the same number of people pass through Roding Valley in a day than do Victoria in ninety seconds.

The tracks were laid in 1903, but the station wasn’t actually opened until 1936 by the London & North Eastern Railway. Since 2006, it it one of the few stations that is permanently unstaffed and one of twelve stations to have no ticket barriers.

This is a terribly short post this week because there’s so little to say about the station, but I wanted to include it simply because it’s remarkable that it is still there at all. It’s not architecturally special, there’s nothing particularly important nearby that you’d need to use it for, but it must be nice knowing you’re one of the few people who use it regularly.

Long may Roding Valley keep up its vigil and show that the tube network works just as well out on the fringes as it does in the city centre.