Three in five train trips are on foreign-owned services
London Overground is the busiest rail company fully or partly owned overseas, with 189 million journeys.
It is part of Arriva, a subsidiary of German state-owned Deutsche Bahn.
Northern, part of the same firm, is the second busiest operator under foreign ownership, with 107 million journeys in 2016/17.
The totals are based on the number of journeys made with each company, according to the Office of Rail and Road figures, and adjusted by the proportion of the companies that are overseas-owned.
The amount of services run foreign companies rose in 2017.
West Midlands Railway took over from London Midland earlier this month.
The ownership of the new operator is a partnership which is 70 per by cent from the Netherlands and 30 per cent from Japan, replacing Govia, which is 65 per cent UK-owned.
Hong Kong company MTR began running South Western Railway with First Group in August, taking over from British firm Stagecoach’s South West Trains.
In February, Italian state operator Trenitalia took over the c2c franchise from Birmingham-based National Express.
Mick Whelan, general secretary of train drivers’ union Aslef, said: “It is splendidly ironic that the Tory government believes in state ownership of Britain’s railways, as long as they are foreign state-owned companies.
“The only state that cannot, under the Tories, run our railways is the British state. That’s why we believe in bringing Britain’s railways back into public ownership, a policy now popular with Conservative as well as Labour voters.”
Transport Secretary Chris Grayling told the Commons in November that privatisation of the network in the mid-1990s “sparked a remarkable turnaround in the railways’ fortunes”, with passenger numbers more than doubling.
Office of Rail and Road figures show that £4.2billion of taxpayers’ cash went to the rail industry in 2016/17.
The Rail Delivery Group, representing train companies, says profit margins are about three per cent and private investment in rail reached a record £925million in 2016/17.