Pubs and bars ranked fourth in the best performing categories, after bread, retail services and clothing.
Hamish Kiernan, director of retail for Network Rail, said: “The numbers as a whole are staggering; almost 850 million people visited our stations in 2014 and of those people, over 34% chose to visit one of our retail units.
“That’s around 289 million people, a significant rise of over 13% compared to 2013. It’s a very positive time in the station retail sector and we have a number of plans and projects ready to create even better environments for our customers in 2015.”
London’s King’s Cross was the best performing across the network, reporting Christmas period sales growth of almost 50%. Stations outside of London also mirrored the festive trend with Glasgow and Birmingham growing by 26% and 22% respectively.
The top stations for sales growth were King’s Cross, Glasgow, Euston, Birmingham and Paddington.
Network Rail has over 510,000 sq ft of retail space at 18 rail stations across the country.