All Aboard! the splendid ‘Mail Rail’

Down into another tunnel for a trip on one of the capital’s less well known bits of the transport network – the Postal Museum’s ‘Mail Rail’.

Originally opened in 1927 it was a fully automated (i.e. no drivers), electric narrow gauge railway that transported letters (remember those?) across the capital for the Royal Mail.

It closed in 2003, but the tunnels still exist some 20 metres below London’s streets, running from Paddington in the west to Whitechapel in the east, connecting the major sorting offices and delivery centres for the post. Millions of letters a day used to be whizzed along the lines, saving the need to put dozens of trucks on narrow London streets.

The biggest sorting office was Mount Pleasant in Clerkenwell, and it is a loop of the line under these buildings – starting and finishing in the service’s old maintenance and engineering sidings – that the museum’s little ride can be found.

You step down into the bright red ‘carriages’ (which are less than a metre wide and not much taller, and with leg room that even Warwick Davis might grumble about) and then go on a 15 minute journey to learn about the service, its history, and the people who worked on it.

At a couple of the ‘stations’ – when in use by the mail these were the places where post sacks were loaded or offloaded – there are videos/animations that give you information about the construction of the line, what happened during the war, and the processes by which letters and parcels were collected and distributed across the capital. There’s an interesting recorded commentary, glimpses along spur tunnels and of abandoned or out of use platforms, and above your head as you travel you see the tunnel stalactites coming down from the joins in the sections of the tube.

Afterwards, as you clamber out of the carriage, unfolding your legs and trying to avoid hitting your head on the low doors (the spaces were designed for mail sacks, not people, after all) there are some of the original rolling stock to look at, information about the railway’s operation, and plenty of hands-on stuff for kids to grapple with.

If you don’t fancy the ride (or want to experience even more) the museum does after hours tunnel walks where you trace the route on foot, and see some of those spurs and out of use ‘stations’ that are seen from the train. (The link for those walks is here. They’re the thick end of £60 for the tour, which is too rich even for me, but if anyone from the museum marketing department wants to bung me a free ticket…)

The Mail Rail leaves every 30 minutes (it’s worth booking, particularly at school holiday times) and is part of the Postal Museum, a collection that opened in 2017 which traces the history of the country’s postal service from the time of Henry VIII.

There are lots of artefacts here: an 18th century mail coach, Victorian postmen’s ‘hen and chickens‘ five-wheeled cycles, Royal Mail vans and motorcycles. There are pillar boxes that comprise the full set of royal cyphers (including the very rare Edward VIII one), stamps and design templates for stamps (there’s an almost complete sheet of unused Penny Blacks, the world’s first postage stamp. It’s apparently valued in the millions), telephone boxes, postal uniforms going back to the 18th century. It’s a very good balance of the generally interesting and the supremely nerdy, and there is lots of hand-on stuff for kids too.

I’m an ex-postman (I did three weeks on the Christmas post in 1980, but I’m claiming it) and quite enjoy a specialist museum, but I’d recommend a trip here for anyone who is looking for a different London experience. And definitely go on the Mail Rail, which is worth the price of admission by itself.

The Postal Museum is open Tuesday to Sunday (and Mondays during school holidays) and you find it at 15-20 Phoenix Place, WC1X 0DA. Full details on their website here.

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