From the 2nd January 2010 onwards, the Oyster Card will be accepted on most of the train lines running within zones 1-6 in central and greater London.

This will, for example, include popular mainline train routes such as London Victoria to East Croydon train station, and Liverpool Street Train Station to Gidea Park station. There are no major changes to London bus routes yet, but it won’t be surprising if there were tweaks to frequencies and new services announced in early 2010 as these new train services will open up new channels of public transport traffic.

However, notable exceptions to this blanket-wide Oyster card acceptance are the Heathrow Express and Heathrow Connect services, as well as the Southeastern High Speed services between Kings Cross St Pancras International and Stratford Station in East London.

This will mean much lower fares for commuters that live within the 6 fare zones in London, but are forced to pay train monthly or yearly passes instead of Tube monthly/yearly passes, which are much cheaper.

Below is part of the full tube & train map which includes only zone 1 and parts of zone 2. The new full updated tube and train map for 2010 is available for download in pdf here. Including the new extended circle line that will start running in the middle of December 2009. The TFL JourneyPlanner will also be updated to take advantage of these new train routes.

For more information about getting around London by tube and bus with an Oyster Card, please read my Getting Around London page.