In a previous life I worked for a company who operated newspaper kiosks, many of which were at railway stations.
The manager of one such kiosk had the keys to the station building and used to open it up at 04:30 so he could open up the kiosk, well before the station staff arrived.
An absolutely fascinating business, never seen anything like it and probably never will again given the demise of newspaper sales generally.[/QUOTE
It’s gradually becoming rarer for whole stations to be opened by shop staff. They would obviously have keys for their own kiosks, and might be able to open part of the station to access the kiosks or take deliveries, but there’s usually no need for them to be opening up ticket offices or platform access.
I'm sure that I remember previous discussion on here about a station that was routinely opened by a staff member of one of the shops - the discussion arose as a result of them not turning up one morning and the station not being opened in time. There's something at the back of my mind telling me that the station was East Croydon, but that seems like far too major a station for something like that to be the routine.
East Croydon is staffed 24/7/365 (yes, even Christmas Day...) and has been for many, many years - so I doubt it was there. You may be thinking of Tulse Hill, which occasionally used to have issues with staff turning up, though I can’t remember if they were shop staff or the station staff. Needless to say, “something was done” about that.
On almost all the Docklands Light railway the stations are ungated, and lit, 24x7. Never seen any issue as a result, despite it being inner-city.
In terms of design and operation, many of them are more like tram stops, really. Very few of those would close overnight.
The old GWR, and BR Western Region, had Halts, with no staff or locks but they had lighting. It was turned on by the guard of the last daylight train, and off by that of the last train. If there was a regular evening passenger they were shown the switch and trusted to turn them off after everyone else had left, and then grope their way to the road. Never heard of any problem. Some to the end still had oil lamps, but these were times when passengers still knew what to do with those.
Some stations have lights on timers or sensors now. Sensors aren’t usually too bad, but timers are a complete nuisance - they regularly get reset by power blips/cuts or maintenance work, then dusk falls and some poor soul has to spend their evening coordinating electricians and emergency lighting.
