Crofton Park train services - the facts

Following Patrick's article about the future of Crofton Park trains, following the Thameslink construction, another BCer, David, did some further digging and has been able to confirm that Crofton Park services will return to a similar pattern to the one they enjoyed before works began. He says:

I emailed Thameslink and have just got a relatively detailed reply about exactly what will happen to the Crofton Park line. I thought it may be of interest for the site. Fundamentally trains to Blackfriars will resume in May, but they will not run the line through the Thameslink core (though presumably we will be able to change on to the other lines at Blackfriars so it is hardly a disaster.

Thameslink said:

Regarding evening and weekend services between Crofton Park and Sevenoaks: the Service Development Planner has confirmed that currently this is one of those services which falls into a gap between two operators. 

The existing weekday joint services between Sevenoaks and Kentish Town etc. will be maintained in the May 2012 timetable. In addition Southeastern will run some later services to and from Sevenoaks and Blackfriars. 

These are late evening services, which currently originate or terminate at Victoria because there is no access to Blackfriars due to engineering works. At weekends from May, Southeastern will revert their current London - Sevenoaks via Catford service to originate or terminate at Blackfriars instead of Victoria.

As these are purely Southeastern services, they do not appear as part of our Thameslink project publicity, which is concerned with the First Capital Connect Thameslink route. First Capital Connect certainly, and we believe Southeastern, have both looked at extending the through services to include weekends, but we were not able to make a commercially viable business case, and I suspect that Southeastern were not able to either.