Some may hear Celia Johnson whisper “duhling” in the smoky refreshment room at the mythical Milford Junction in Brief Encounter. Others will think only of the legendary British Rail pork pie. But for those whose preconceptions of railway station catering and amenities may be stuck in previous decades, the latest data from Network Rail may come as a shock.
The operator of the nation’s train tracks owns and runs 17 of the biggest and busiest stations on the network. While official high street retail data shows consumer spending is flat at best, Network Rail says that income from shopping, eating and drinking at its stations in the past year has soared by more than 5 per cent.
According to Gavin McKechnie, Network Rail’s head of retail, railway station catering has been transformed. “Travellers Fare went some time ago,” he said, referring to the much-derided British Rail catering brand, “but up until four or five years ago, the spirit of Travellers Fare still existed at some of our stations. The turning point was St Pancras [the new Eurostar terminal]. People looked at what could be done. [Now we have] good retailing which is ‘on the way’, not in the way.”
Network Rail’s latest figures show that retail sales in the final quarter of 2010 were up a shade over 5 per cent on a like-for-like basis, compared with the same three months in 2009. That followed growth of 5.34 per cent in the third quarter. Those figures do not include St Pancras as the station and its high-speed line are owned by a pair of Canadian pension funds, although Network Rail operates the retail mall.
Cynics may suggest sales are soaring because of the amount of waiting that passengers have to do; Mr McKechnie suggests they might be half-right. He points to the popularity of cheaper tickets: many discounted fares apply only to a certain train so, rather than miss it and be forced to buy another, more expensive ticket for a later train, passengers are pitching up earlier at stations and using their “dwell time” to eat or drink or shop.
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Network Rail is benefiting from the record number of passengers on the railways as well. Recent figures show that even though the economy is only limping out of recession, the number of passenger journeys in 2010 topped 1.32 billion — the most since the great age of steam in the 1920s.
And the company says that its retail success is due in part to the arrival of formats familiar to many high street consumers. The heart-stopping Casey Jones burger bars of British Rail have long gone and consumers instead are filing into outlets catering for “an upmarket demographic”: Boost Juice Bars, Wasabi sushi cafes and Souper Douper soup kitchens have helped sales of specialist foods at Network Rail stations to leap 30 per cent. The likes of M&S Simply Food have resulted in concourse supermarkets posting year-on-year rises of 14 per cent in trade.