Thameslink to halve rail services again later this month in south east London and Kent

Thameslink will again halve the number of services running along the Greenwich line and north Kent later this month, bringing it down to just one service per hour for much of the day.

The reduced service starts on Saturday 24th October and runs throughout the following week. That leaves just one direct train from many north Kent stations to the Elizabeth line interchange at Abbey Wood.

Halving services also once again ensures 30 minute gaps in services at busy inner London stations such as Deptford, Greenwich, Maze Hill and Westcombe Park.

One train per hour from Thameslink will be in force all day on weekends and outside peak hours on weekdays. Southeastern will run their standard timetable though this leaves long gaps between trains.

Thameslink first cut services to one per hour over the summer, starting just days after it was nationalised and taken over by the Department for Transport directly.

Deptford, for example, will see 30 minute gaps. The station now sees more passengers than it has in decades due to new housing and many commercial spaces below and beside the station. Saturday is also market day on the High Street.

Improvements

Thameslink cuts compounds Southeastern cuts along the line made back in 2022 (also ordered by the Department for Transport) but fortunately in December 2026 they will be reversed, and prior service levels seen before 2022 will resume.

That means that future Thameslink cuts won’t have quite the same impact for those in London. Those in Kent are less lucky as they’ll still see just one direct service an hour to change for the Elizabeth line if or when the DfT orders more cuts in 2027.

Still, improvements in London are welcome as a 30 minute service gap every hour on a busy, urban Metro service in a densely populated part of one of the world’s biggest city’s is frankly poor.

And that’s before the ever growing list of new homes and developments are factored in around Deptford and Greenwich. There’s certainly no shortage of them as regularly covered on this site.

Thameslink will bring back the two trains per hour service level throughout the day across both weekends and weekdays on 31st October.