I have now received a reply from London Travel Watch, on the removal of evening services from Charing Cross. Note the very interesting part in paragraph 3:

"... to summarise this is how the situation came about:

"1. Network Rail proposes withdrawal of services in South London RUS - but only at peak times and suggests further work on the off peak service.
2. DfT tells Southeastern that they can assume from December 2009 new timetable no Southern services will run through to Charing Cross, but including evenings and weekends.
3. Southeastern submits a timetable bid to Network Rail in compliance with DfT's instructions.
4. Network Rail then tells Southern sorry you can't have your timetable aspiration for continuing evening and weekend services to Charing Cross.
5. Consequently Southern has to withdraw from evening and Sunday services.

"The perverse part of this is that the actual number of Southeastern trains going through to Charing Cross in the evening and on Sundays is not increasing in December 2009 - they are just moving the timings of their services! Our Director, Research & Development asked DfT whether they would object to Southern proposing to run to Charing Cross on a commercial basis and they said no and passed the problem on to Network Rail.

"I would suggest therefore that ultimately the DfT is the responsible decision maker and in this instance you might wish to contact them. Here are their contact details:

Department for Transport, Great Minster House, 76 Mintern Street, London, SW1P 4DR, tel 020 7944 8300"

I am not quite sure what to make of all this, but first thoughts are that there are so many parties involved here that our direct service seems to have fallen into the cracks between them all. I am no longer sure if there is any justification for removing the service to Charing Cross. This certainly does not tally with what Southern said at the meeting on the 17th.

I will certainly be writing to DfT and also asking Joan Ruddock to do the same. I will also write to Southern again to ask for their comment on this.