Changes for Peterborough to London train services announced

The shake-up by Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) will see a number of changes made to rail services to and from Peterborough.

These include Direct Thameslink services from Peterborough to Horsham in West Sussex via London Bridge and Gatwick Airport and a new half-hourly cross-London service from Horsham via Redhill to London Bridge, Blackfriars, Farringdon, City Thameslink, St Pancras International and beyond to Stevenage and Peterborough.

The announcement made today includes:

The new trains and services will create capacity for approximately 40,000 more peak-time passengers from May this year to London from Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined, rising to 60,000 in 2019.

The new schedule will operate from 2am on Sunday, May 20. However, until June 11 there will be a slightly reduced rush hour service between Peterborough and London.

By the time the changes are complete there will be almost a third more carriages from Peterborough, Huntingdon, St Neots with more than 1,200 extra seats.

The news that commuters between Peterborough and London will be able to travel directly to St Pancras station on new trains, then onto Gatwick Airport - was first revealed last November.

This included news that the new Thameslink trains will give passengers the latest Tube updates and let them know where there is space on the train.

Charles Horton, GTR chief executive, said: “A huge number of passengers will notice the benefits in terms of new journeys, better intervals between trains, improved reliability and more capacity across a wide region.

“We are redeploying trains and crew and there may be some disruption, so we ask passengers for their understanding during the transition period of several weeks during which time a very small number of trains will not run.

“Almost a quarter of all rail journeys are taken on the GTR network and because of the necessary scale of the change we strongly urge passengers to check ahead as to how their journeys will be affected.

“Introduction of the new timetables is a major milestone in the delivery of RailPlan 20/20, our programme to modernise rail services, taking advantage of the new infrastructure and trains provided by the Thameslink Programme.

“These changes followed the biggest and most effective consultation of its kind during which we made hundreds of amendments, some substantial, in response to 28,000 responses.”

The new timetables can be seen here.