Retail sales at Britain's biggest and busiest railway stations continue significantly to outperform the high street, latest figures from Network Rail show.
Station like-for-like sales between July and September 2013 grew 4.74% over the same period last year. High street sales, reported by the British Retail Consortium, grew by 1.5% over the same period.

Network Rail's figures were compiled from the results of retailers operating from over 580,000sq ft of retail space - 520 units/shops - at 16 of Britain's biggest stations, with a combined annual footfall of over 1bn.

The top-performing stations were Kings Cross, 28.4% up from the 2012 period, Edinburgh Waverley, up 13.1%, and Manchester Piccadilly, up 13.1%, with specialist foods, supermarkets and bars performing especially strongly. This is the second biggest growth in station retail results recorded over the past three years.

Network Rail's retail commercial director, Hamish Kiernan, said: "These latest figures show that stations have become great trading environments for retailers, thanks to the growing numbers of people who choose to travel by rail and Network Rail's programme of investment to create destination stations.

"The huge growth in sales at King's Cross, where the new western concourse has given people a much wider choice of food, drink and retail brands, shows that investment in bigger, better stations can benefit passengers, businesses and the wider public."

All profits from Network Rail's retail activity are re-invested in the railway.