Hello, it's a grey wintry day in London.
Behind me is the DLR, that is Beckton Park.
That is the least used DLR station on the network
except it's not.
I've already lied to you.
Behind me is actually Cyprus station
but it's really similar to Beckton Park in design.
So similar that if you take this shot here,
this is Cyprus, and you take this shot here,
of Beckton Park which is just up there
but I've already been there,
you can see how they're very, very similar,
almost identical in design.
We are gonna Beckton Park but we'll do that
via an old railway, so a quick walk to take us there.
Beckton Park is in zone three on the Beckton branch
of the DLR which opened in 1994.
It sits on the site of a former railway
which we'll explore in a moment.
It's just worth noting though, that if you
do the classic thing of pretending to drive the train
by sitting at the front, you do get a great view
of how the railway runs alongside the road here,
but dips down to be in the middle of
and underneath a roundabout.
I carried on though, to the end of the line
at Beckton station, itself.
Here, if you're looking at the station,
do a 180-degree turn and you'll see yourself
looking down a very straight path,
a dead giveaway of an old railway line.
And yes, this is the Beckton corridor
where the line built by the Gaslight and Koch Company
but operated by the Great Eastern Railway
used to run from 1874.
The original Beckton railway station was the only station
on this branch and it closed in 1940 due to bomb damage
during the second world war.
Walk all the way down to the lovely Beckton District Park,
follow the sign to the Capital Ring
and you'll find yourself back at Beckton Park DLR station.
So a walk along the old railway line
down the Beckton corridor brings me
to Beckton Park DLR station, itself.
Famously, there's this road above it
so if you look on it says that the railway here,
the DLR between Beckton Park and Cyprus
runs along the median of the road.
And what's interesting is that when you get to the station,
this one and Cyprus, there's no way, and I can't see a way
that you get from sort of street level up to that road.
You can't access the road and vice-versa from the station.
The station does have stair-free access with two ramps
leading down to the platforms on both sides.
Although there are short staircases, as well.
And you know me, I can never resist
counting steps when I see them.
Facilities-wise, there are no ticket barriers
but there is a ticket machine, dot-matrix indicators,
Oyster validators, those nicely designed DLR bike racks
and it's served by local buses.
And yes, there are also bin bags,
multiple bin bags on both platforms at this station.
But the question remains is
why do people come to Beckton Park?
Now one stop down at Cyprus, they've got the college,
or is that university?
University.
That brings a lot of the passage traffic here.
I'm not sure what there is.
There's a big sign for the Royal Albert Dock.
But there's one other passenger down there on the platform
and it's kind of, I'm just thinking,
yeah, you can see why it's least used.
I'm not sure what is in the area
that would bring people here.
So I went for a walk because I was determined
to find a way up to road-level.
It turns out the way to do it is to exit
out the south side of the station
and walk through the new Royal Albert Docks development
and that takes you up to road-level.
Okay, so there's an area behind me that's
the Royal Albert Dock and the R Kelley
developing it for commercial purposes.
There's even a coffee stand.
If you walk round, you do get to the public road
and the roundabout.
I don't recommend this
because there's like, traffic and stuff.
But you can see the station from above
from the roundabout.
(chuckling) It's like on that shot of the train,
that's of this rumbling noise.
It wasn't the DLR, it was a plane taking off
over there at the airport.
It's right by London City Airport.
The noise you heard was the plane, not the train.
Also, that's very reminiscent of the, if you ever go
to Leinster Gardens, the fake facade and all that,
circle line, and you peer over the wall,
looks just like that.
So the DLR has 45 stations in total
and Beckton Park is the least used.
But how many people actually use this stop?
Can't do a least used station though
without doin' the stats, of course,
and they will appear here.
And I'll give you the top 10 for whole of the DLR
because I find it quite interesting.
So the 10th least used with 1.7 million is
Elverson Road, then King George the Fifth.
Cyprus, just one stop that way, is at 1.5 million.
Then West India Quay, then Gallions Reach
which is out this way, as well.
Star Lane is at number five.
Abbey Road is at number four.
The third least used is Stratford High Street
at 1.1 million, and then we dip below the one million mark.
Pudding Mill Lane is at 905,000.
And here at Beckton Park is just
648,381 passengers per year.
That's just 1,776 passengers per day.
And how does that stack up and compare
to all the other lines and stations in this series?
Beckton Park falls into fourth place
behind the least used tram stop,
least used overground stop,
and least used Tube station on the Central Line.
Click on the playlist to watch all the other videos
in this series to see all the other
least used stations on "The Tube Man."
(train accelerating)
And with that and nothing else going on
at Beckton Park, it was time to head home.
And so that is your least used station
on the DLR, that's Beckton Park.
Still got one more to go in this series.