In response to the question about compensation, Southern always fall back on the pay for delay policy. What this means I think is that if your train is more than 30mins late you are entitled to a refund. Of course if you live in SE London where your journey to LB should only take 15mins then it's unlikely your train will ever be >30mins late (it is more likely they will just cancel it).

The other effect of this policy is that it means Southern can treat London commuters like second class citizens in favour of people commuting from outside London. This is why you often will see a late running service due to stop at Sydenham/FH/HO etc be run fast from either Norwood Junction, Croydon etc. They claim it is to minimise disruption but what they are doing is saving themselves from delay claims and saving themselves from bad "on time" statistics by cancelling our services at short notice and running fast to make up the time.

It's ridiculous.