Retail sales within railway stations are steadily outstripping those on the high street, new figures show.
Network Rail said this week that retailers operating in stations enjoyed 2.37% like-for-like sales growth from July to September 2012 over the same time last year. In the same period high street sales, as reported by the British Retail Consortium, grew by just 0.5%.

This is the ninth consecutive quarter that station retail results have outperformed the high street.

The figures were compiled from the results of retailers operating from over 580,000sq ft of retail space (520 units/shops) at the 17 stations owned and operated by Network Rail - some of Britain's biggest and busiest - which have a combined annual footfall of over one billion.

Top-performing stations include London Bridge (up 10.8% from last year), followed by Manchester Piccadilly (up 9.7%) and London Victoria (up 7.7%).

Gifts performed best in stations this last quarter, reporting a 30.77% increase, followed by food and beverage offers at 18.5%, bread at 9.75% and hot food at 8.12%.
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David Biggs, director of property at Network Rail, said: "These are excellent results, and show that the high levels of footfall guaranteed in stations continue to give our retail partners the edge over the high street."

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