Charing Cross reopened 17 August: claim refunds by 30 Sep

Charing Cross and Waterloo East reopened on 17 August. If the 22-day closure cost you extra fares, Southeastern's refund form closes on 30 September.

London Charing Cross and Waterloo East reopened on Monday 17 August 2026, the date Southeastern had set when it announced the work, and Sevenoaks trains are running to and from Charing Cross again on the normal timetable. The 22-day closure that began on Sunday 26 July is over. (Southeastern, Charing Cross and Waterloo East station closures)

The reopening did not slip. Checked in the early hours of 17 August, the National Rail departure board for Charing Cross showed the first train of the day leaving at 05.20 for Gravesend, the first for Sevenoaks at 05.31, and Hastings line services arriving back into Charing Cross from Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells from 05.46. (National Rail, live departures from London Charing Cross)

Chart by Sevenoaks Online

Refunds: the claim form shuts on 30 September

The part of this that still costs money is the part almost nobody is talking about. If you normally travel via Charing Cross or Waterloo East and paid more to get round the closure by a reasonable alternative route, Southeastern will refund the difference, and its claim form stays open only until Wednesday 30 September. Both the closure page and the form itself give that date. (Southeastern, Charing Cross and Waterloo East refund claim form)

What the form asks for:

A copy of your original ticket, whether that is a season ticket, a Key smartcard or another eligible ticket.
Evidence of the extra cost, meaning an Oyster or contactless journey statement, or copies of the additional tickets you bought. Southeastern is explicit that proof of the journey is needed and that receipts must be shown.
If you paid by contactless or Oyster, you have to register that card on the TfL Go app before you can pull off the statements, which is the step worth doing first because it takes a day or two to be useful.
One form covers several dates, so a commuter who bought a different ticket every morning for three weeks files one claim, not twenty.

One thing the form will not do is compensate you for the timetable itself. Southeastern’s position is that Delay Repay is measured against the amended timetable published for the day, not the normal one, so a train that ran to its revised closure-period time was not late. You qualify only if you arrived 15 minutes or more behind that revised time. (Southeastern, Charing Cross and Waterloo East station closures)

What is next on the Sevenoaks lines

Charing Cross being open again does not mean a clear run. Network Rail’s work has moved out of London and onto the lines through the town: on Sunday 6 September Southeastern lists no trains between Orpington and Tonbridge and none between Otford and Sevenoaks, which closes both of the town’s routes on the same day, and the Otford link goes again on 19 and 20 September. We set the whole month out, weekend by weekend, in Sevenoaks trains: both lines closed on Sunday 6 September.

The weekend of 10 and 11 October

The final booked closure is a full weekend, Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 October, with no trains to or from Charing Cross or Waterloo East on either day while engineers work between Charing Cross and New Cross. (National Rail, no Southeastern services at London Charing Cross or London Waterloo East on 10 and 11 October)

For Sevenoaks that weekend splits in two, and which train you pick matters more than usual:

Grove Park line. Trains that normally run between Charing Cross and Sevenoaks run between London Victoria and Sevenoaks instead, both days. On the Saturday, Cannon Street to Orpington trains do not run at all.
Hastings line. The main line trains to Hastings run to and from London Bridge, and they run non-stop between London Bridge and Tonbridge by a different route, so they will not call at Sevenoaks or Hildenborough. On the Saturday there are no London Bridge to Tunbridge Wells trains.
Hildenborough gets a partial replacement on the Saturday only: the Ramsgate and Dover Priory trains, diverted to Victoria, call there additionally, and at Orpington across the whole weekend. On the Sunday those diverted trains run no further than Ashford International.

Nine stations on the route into London are closed all weekend and served only by replacement buses, including Grove Park, Chislehurst, Elmstead Woods, Hither Green, St Johns and New Cross. Accessible buses run between Lewisham and Orpington calling at all stations, and between Greenwich and Sidcup. Ticket acceptance that weekend covers the Underground between Victoria, Charing Cross, Embankment, Waterloo, Southwark, London Bridge and Cannon Street. (National Rail, 10 and 11 October)

October is far enough out that the detail may still move, and Network Rail says so itself: the service plans for these follow-up weekends will be different from the ones used during the 22 days, and passengers should check before travelling. Its own page is now the source that still carries the dates, because Southeastern’s has dropped them. (Network Rail, Charing Cross upgrades)

What happened on Sunday 23 August

The last of the August follow-up days ran as booked. Charing Cross and Waterloo East took no trains for the day, and both routes through Sevenoaks ran to and from London Cannon Street: the Grove Park line service via Dunton Green, Knockholt, Chelsfield and Orpington, and the Hastings line service, the main line through Sevenoaks and Hildenborough. Ramsgate and Dover Priory trains also started from Cannon Street, ran hourly and went via Maidstone East because of separate work on the Paddock Wood route. Tickets were accepted on the Underground between Victoria, Charing Cross, Embankment, Waterloo, Southwark and London Bridge at no extra cost. (National Rail, no Southeastern services at London Charing Cross or London Waterloo East on Sunday 23 August)

What the 22 days involved

For the record, between 26 July and 16 August the Grove Park line ran to and from London Bridge, with some trains diverted via Lewisham, and the last train for stations to Sevenoaks left London Bridge at 22.37 rather than Charing Cross later. Hastings line trains ran between London Bridge and Hastings, with some peak services to and from Cannon Street. On the two Sundays of 9 and 16 August, Sevenoaks trains went to London Victoria instead and ran non-stop between Victoria and Petts Wood, while Hastings line services took the long way round via East Croydon and Redhill and skipped Sevenoaks and Hildenborough altogether. (Southeastern, Charing Cross and Waterloo East station closures; National Rail, Sunday 16 August)

All of that has now ended. From 17 August the published timetable applies again, including the late evening trains from Charing Cross that the closure had pulled forward and moved across the river.

Why the station was shut

Network Rail spent £20m on the approach to Charing Cross. The work covered 1,800 metres of new track and 16 sets of switches and crossings between Charing Cross and Waterloo East, replacing equipment in use since 1990, rebuilt the country end of the Charing Cross platforms on new foundations, upgraded track drainage at Waterloo East, and made structural repairs to the 175-year-old Hungerford Bridge and the footbridge between Waterloo East and Waterloo. Southeastern said the old track had caused more than 21,000 minutes of delays. (Southeastern, Charing Cross and Waterloo East station closures)

Before your next trip

If you drive to the station, our guide to parking in Sevenoaks covers the station car parks and the council long-stay options. Only part of Sevenoaks station is step-free at the moment while the platform 1 and 2 lifts are renewed, which our update on the lift works sets out.

Now that the normal pattern is back, our full guide to Sevenoaks train times to London is the page to use: it covers the timetable, the fastest services and what a season ticket costs.

Sources

Updated 2 September 2026: the August bank holiday weekend passed as forecast, with no work on either Sevenoaks route, so that section has been replaced by the one thing still open to readers, the refund claim form, which Southeastern and its own form both date to 30 September. The 10 and 11 October closure was re-verified against National Rail the same day and is unchanged. Updated 24 August 2026: the Sunday 23 August closure has passed and is now recorded in the past tense, and the August bank holiday weekend was checked against the National Rail per-operator pages for Southeastern and Thameslink, which show no work on either Sevenoaks route. The 10 and 11 October dates were re-verified the same day against Network Rail and National Rail. Southeastern’s own planned engineering page had by then dropped every forward date, so it is no longer cited for them. Updated 17 August 2026: rewritten on the morning Charing Cross reopened; an earlier version wrongly listed 22 August as a closure date, when only Sunday 23 August was affected.

Image: Arrival at Sevenoaks platform 3 by DS Pugh, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Geograph.