DIRECT rail links from East Croydon to Peterborough and Cambridge will available for the first time as part of the £6 billion being spent on upgrading Thameslink services between 2014 and 2019.
Commuters from the town will also benefit from more capacity on peak hour services to and from Victoria and London Bridge.
Passengers using East Croydon will get an as yet unspecified share of 115,000 extra train seats which will be provided by 2019.
The benefits are outlined in Network Rail's latest investment programme for London and the South East announced this week.
The programme also includes track and signalling improvements and power upgrades.
Under the Thameslink programme, passengers using East Croydon will still be able to travel to Bedford and Luton Airport.
As part of the upgrade, which will mean 24 Thameslink trains an hour running through central London, there will be a new tunnel link from St Pancras providing a direct route via Hitchin and Stevenage to Peterborough and Cambridge.
A spokesman for Network Rail said: "For Croydon the biggest thing is the Thameslink programme with passengers particularly benefiting from that."
But he warned that the "flip side" for commuters in the shorter term would be the rebuilding of London Bridge station – what Network Rail describes as "the single most ambitious and challenging redevelopment of any station in Britain".
The spokesman said: "There will obviously be considerable disruption to passengers while we are carrying out the work."
