London is going to get a new museum in early 2017 – The Postal Museum and for the first time in their 100 year history, a section of the disused subterranean Mail Rail tunnels will be opened up to the public as a ride.
Five Facts about Mail Rail?
1. Visitors will be given an opportunity to be transported back in time on a 15 minute ride through a section of the tunnels
2. It runs deep under London for 6.5 miles and was first used in 1927
3. The Rosetta Stone was stored in its tunnels during the First World War, along with other art treasures to protect them from the bombs
4. Mail Rail employed over 200 staff and carried more than six million bags of mail below ground each year – that’s four million letters a day!
5. Mail Rail was preceded by an 1860’s pneumatic rail system where cars loaded with mail were propelled through the tunnels by air.
I was invited to the official launch of the Postal Museum, to be given a very early preview tour of the attraction, just a few weeks ago. Not the sort of thing I would normally be interested in attending, but I have a massive nostalgia for the way that our mail used to be transported and delivered around London – I used to imagine it was delivered by little elves all furiously working through the night and you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that was indeed the case when you see the teeny weeny trains that wiggled around the tiny tunnels underground – just like the tube tunnels, only smaller. The trains were driver-less (or so they say)…..
This was the posh train for royalty and you can really imagine Churchill et al being transported around London during the war on this little train:-
The museum is in Clerkenwell – where I spotted a very sweet “I Love You” sign graffitied on to the wall:-
The attraction will reveal stories from five centuries of Britain’s fascinating communications history through the eyes of one of it’s most iconic services. When it opens you will actually be able to be allowed to ride around the little disused miniature tunnels. There will be an immersive ride which will be very attractive to children of today – they will think it’s something out of the Stone Age, given they have never actually licked an envelope in their lifetime (or not many anyway).
There will be five interactive zones, leading visitors through five centuries of the story of how our post got delivered, from the 1500’s to today. There will be a horse-drawn mail coach to start the story off in the first zone, the growth of the Post office in the second including a display of a priceless sheet of The Penny Black, then how they coped during the war, followed by the marketing of the stamps history and finally “communication and Change” to see how the Post Office dealt with progress.
It was fascinating.
