Stansted Airport railway station is on a branch line off the West Anglia Main Line in the East of England and was opened in 1991 to provide a rail link to London Stansted Airport. It is 36 mi down the line from London Liverpool Street station, to which a frequent dedicated service called the Stansted Express operates. The short branch line was constructed at a cost of £44 million and opened by British Rail to coincide with the completion of the airport's new terminal building. With over 9 million passengers from 2023-2024, it is the busiest station in Essex, the second busiest in the East of England, and the sixteenth busiest in the country outside of London.

Layout

Platforms 1 and 3 run the full length of the station and are used for Stansted Express and Norwich services. The shorter platform number 2 is used for the CrossCountry-operated services to Birmingham New Street. In 2011 platform 1 was extended to accommodate two trains simultaneously in combinations of up to 16 coaches, and platform 2 was extended to accommodate four-coach trains. The station is in a concrete box structure that is, unusually, above ground level rather than below ground, being constructed under the terminal building. This is evident at the western end of the platforms which are left open and is a similar design to Wembley Central railway station. Currently ticket checks are completely manual for both arriving and departing passengers. This can lead to long queues and crowding, especially soon after an arrival of a terminating service. With the planned introduction of the contactless travel payment option pending, gated ticket barriers are expected to be installed.

Services

Services at Stansted Airport are operated by Greater Anglia (including services under the Stansted Express brand) and CrossCountry. The typical off-peak service in trains per hour (tph) is: