Railway geekery ahoy! The key source for Sydney train station usage information is the Train, Metro, and Light Rail Station Entries and Exits Data. I’ve aggregated all the data from there to reveal Sydney’s busiest and least used stations, summing all exits and entries across calendar 2025 for 387 stations (we’re counting light rail stops as stations here too).
10 busiest Sydney railway stations 2025
| Rank | Station | Total entries+exits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Central | 50334165 |
| 2 | Town Hall | 41130225 |
| 3 | Wynyard | 26939348 |
| 4 | Parramatta | 22709554 |
| 5 | Martin Place | 21620481 |
| 6 | Chatswood | 19973745 |
| 7 | Redfern | 14066249 |
| 8 | Strathfield | 14032220 |
| 9 | Circular Quay | 13546235 |
| 10 | Bondi Junction | 12945691 |
Central takes the top spot, but it’s worth noting that in prior years Town Hall has claimed that crown. The opening of the Metro platforms has clearly boosted Central’s numbers, while Town Hall has undoubtedly seen some passenger traffic shift to Gadigal (which came in at #12 in the overall rankings). Martin Place and Chatswood also clearly benefit from the additional Metro traffic. CBD stations dominate, though Parramatta’s #4 ranking is notable.
10 busiest Sydney Intercity railway stations 2025
| Rank | Station | Total entries+exits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gosford | 2315810 |
| 2 | Woy Woy | 1798126 |
| 3 | Newcastle Interchange Station | 1041685 |
| 4 | Wollongong | 981989 |
| 5 | Katoomba | 774133 |
| 6 | North Wollongong | 682872 |
| 7 | Wyong | 665273 |
| 8 | Tuggerah | 594821 |
| 9 | Thirroul | 479046 |
| 10 | Cardiff | 474765 |
The numbers get much smaller once you start looking at Intercity services. Gosford is the top performer here, but only comes in at #83 on the overall ranking. Cardiff’s appearance is a mild surprise.
10 least used Sydney train stations 2025
As usual, this is hard to state definitively. There are 10 stations which had less than 50 visits every single month, and those low numbers aren’t made public. So these are the 10 Sydney network stations which had the fewest visitors, listed alphabetically because we can’t rank them in order.
- Hilldale
- Lochinvar
- Lysaghts
- Martins Creek
- Mindaribba
- Penrose
- Rydal
- Tallong
- Wallarobba
- Wirragulla
This is almost unchanged from 2023, save for Martins Creek joining the list and Aberdeen leaving it. The continued appearance of Rydal is interesting, given that a nearby Wallerawang is being reopened at a cost of $7 million. Based on these numbers, it likely won’t get a lot of traffic.
Time for the obligatory video of Mindaribba as a reminder of just how small some of these stations are.
With that done. these are the 10 least visited stations for which we have actual annual totals. As you’d expect, many of these are small Intercity stops on remote lines, often request-only, and generally only getting a handful of services a day anyway.
| Rank | Station | Total entries+exits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aberdeen | 225 |
| 2 | Wingello | 228 |
| 3 | Greta | 517 |
| 4 | Zig Zag | 924 |
| 5 | Marulan | 967 |
| 6 | Tarana | 1690 |
| 7 | Bell | 1808 |
| 8 | Exeter | 1858 |
| 9 | Tarro | 2786 |
| 10 | Paterson | 2990 |
Clearly more folks drive to Zig Zag to ride the scenic railway then take the train.
10 busiest Sydney light rail stations 2025
| Rank | Station | Total entries+exits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Central Chalmers Street Light Rail | 8741512 |
| 2 | Chinatown Light Rail | 8288993 |
| 3 | Circular Quay Light Rail | 7565696 |
| 4 | Town Hall Light Rail | 6254519 |
| 5 | QVB Light Rail | 6004806 |
| 6 | Wynyard Light Rail | 4701106 |
| 7 | Haymarket Light Rail | 4275432 |
| 8 | Central Grand Concourse Light Rail | 4059923 |
| 9 | UNSW Anzac Parade Light Rail | 3158746 |
| 10 | Bridge Street Light Rail | 2510673 |
This list is dominated by the L2 and L3 lines from Circular Quay to Randwick and Kingsford – remember when folks claimed no-one would use those services? Ha! The first two stops on the L1 also make the list (I remain continually astonished at folks who get on the light rail at Central and get off immediately at Chinatown). Nothing from the western L4 route makes the top 10; Parramatta Square is the busiest stop on that line (but a paltry #81 overall).
10 least used Sydney light rail stations 2025
| Rank | Station | Total entries+exits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rosehill Gardens Light Rail | 89708 |
| 2 | Ngara Light Rail | 113032 |
| 3 | Taverners Hill Light Rail | 117637 |
| 4 | Waratah Mills Light Rail | 119409 |
| 5 | Marion Light Rail | 183328 |
| 6 | Leichhardt North Light Rail | 195713 |
| 7 | Hawthorne Light Rail | 197171 |
| 8 | Dundas Light Rail | 218016 |
| 9 | Dulwich Grove Light Rail | 219412 |
| 10 | Lilyfield Light Rail | 221414 |
Conversely, L4 dominates the least used list, though a handful of L1 locations also make an appearance. These are all still much busier than many Intercity train stops.
Newcastle light rail statistics 2025
| Rank | Station | Total entries+exits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Newcastle Interchange Light Rail | 622878 |
| 2 | Civic Light Rail | 359086 |
| 3 | Newcastle Beach Light Rail | 291908 |
| 4 | Queens Wharf Light Rail | 245131 |
| 5 | Honeysuckle Light Rail | 216625 |
| 6 | Crown Street Light Rail | 132377 |
Newcastle’s light rail only has six stops. Unsurprisingly, the one at the train station points get the most traffic. Somewhat surprisingly, the next most popular is Civic, just two stops down the line. As we’ve already seen, Newcastle station gets just 1 million entries and exists a year, so it remains much busier than the light rail.
Pedant notes for those who like that sort of thing:
- I haven’t done lots of super-detailed comparisons with earlier years. Transport NSW changed its data collection approach halfway through 2024, so there’s no ranking for that year, and my 2023 data analysis doesn’t include light rail or the extended Metro, which makes quite a difference to the rankings.
- The data shows a whopping 1.49 million light rail exits which are classified as “Unknown station”, which suggests an ongoing software bug somewhere. This happened every single month in 2025, so it can’t be due to oddities like the light rail network occasionally being free.
- The full data set includes the permanently-closed stations on the old Carlingford line and the currently-closed stations on the Bankstown line that is being converted to Metro operation, but I haven’t included them.
- We can’t separately assess the Metro’s performance because of the many stations that interchange with the existing rail network. The busiest Metro stations that aren’t also an interchange are Gadigal, Victoria Cross and Macquarie University.
- The lead picture is Dungog, purely because I had a picture lying around. It ranks at #335, so there’s lots of growth potential there.
Hat tip as always to Diamond Geezer whose methodical annual summary of UK train data is the inspiration for this.
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