Four of England’s busiest train stations were shown to be Covid-free while infections among the community were high thanks to extra cleaning and mask-wearing.
Surfaces frequently touched by customers, like escalator handles, ticket machines and benches, were swabbed and sent away for lab testing.
The same was done on intercity train services and hour-long air samples were also analysed.
Two rounds of testing were carried out at London Euston, Birmingham New Street, Liverpool Lime Street and Manchester Piccadilly station, and on trains running between them.
The experiment, which was led by Imperial College London, was carried out in January and then again in June, and produced encouraging results on both occasions.
According to Department for Transport statistics, use of national rail services in Britain was at around 14% of pre-pandemic levels in January but was back to around half by June.
As well as differing travel patterns, the two months were also starkly different in virological terms.
At the beginning of January, the pandemic in England was at its peak but cases dropped off by more than 50% by the end of the month.
In June, the opposite was true: the month started with 2,539 new cases being reported but by the 30th it had climbed to 21,293, back to levels last seen in January.
Yet on both occasions the results were the same, with stations and trains shown not to be the hotbeds of infections some commuters may have feared.
Rob Mole, senior programme manager for Network Rail’s response to the pandemic, said: ‘Station cleaning teams and train staff have made it their mission to keep passengers safe during the pandemic and this is proof their dedicated approach works.
‘We want all passengers to travel in confidence on the railway network and we will keep doing our part by rigorously cleaning trains and stations.
‘We ask passengers to do their bit too by wearing face coverings while travelling out of respect for others so we can all stop the spread of Covid-19.’
Covid-19 is known to transmit primarily via airborne particles but can survive on indoor surfaces for more than 24 hours.
The legal requirement to wear a mask in stations and on trains ended on July 19 but customers are still encouraged to do so.
A survey by Yougov released last week revealed mask-wearing has remained fairly consistent among older age groups despite the rule change, but has dropped to 26% among under-24s.
It’s unclear from the study what effect the change in guidance on face coverings will have on the spread of the virus on the rail network.
David Green, senior research fellow at Imperial College London, said: ‘In the same way that a swab is used to take a Covid-19 test in the nose and throat and sent to the lab, we use a filter to collect any virus particles in the air and swabs to collect viruses on surfaces.
‘This approach provides a way of quantifying the amount of virus circulating in these public environments and the effect of mitigation strategies like cleaning and wearing face coverings.
‘This is part of a wider programme of work with the public transport sector to understand where this virus is most prevalent so that we can return to pre-pandemic activities as safely as possible.’
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