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Mail Rail

Between 1927 and 2003 the Post Office ran their own little railway under London to get letters and parcels between major transport hubs and their sorting offices. Known as the Mail Rail, while not a secret, it was a working railway and as such was never open to the public. Various reporters and TV shows did the occasional visit but it remained strictly off limits to most people.


That all changed in 2017 when the Postal Museum opened the mothballed railway underneath the Mount Pleasant sorting office as a museum with a visitor centre in the old maintenance depot. You can even ride on the trains, which have been specially adapted for passengers rather than mail sacks.

There's a plethora of stuff online about Mail Rail. Wikipedia has details. Londonist made a video. There are books on the subject available from the usual book retailers. They'll do a much better job of talking about the history than I will.


The Postal Museum also offers walking tours of the railway which offer a totally different experience to a museum (which you get to look around too) and riding a train (which you don't get, obviously, because people are on the tracks).


I went on a walking tour in June 2022 and it was absolutely fascinating. I've got a full album of photos here, but here are some highlights.

The tour starts off in the visitors' centre, situated in the old maintenance depot. After donning suitable PPE our guide led us straight down a little launch ramp into the tunnels.


The tunnels are a hundred years old and as grimy, dark, dank and dingy as you'd expect. In other words, they are WONDERFUL and exploring them was a real treat. Designed for little narrow-gauge trains, even I (I am not particularly tall) had to stoop in places. It isn't somewhere to visit if you're claustrophobic.


Little laminated maps at intervals helped me figure out where I was. Which was just as well; we walked around a tunnel loop and the slow bend was completely disorientating.

We walked through the tunnels to both platforms of Mount Pleasant station. The whole place was deserted but the lights were fully on as if the workers had just stepped out, though the way the panelling was falling off the walls gave the game away in places. It was exceptionally eerie, like something from a horror film or a post-apocalyptic dream.


Although the railway doesn't carry mail any more, it was never completely shut. Officially it's only mothballed, so apparently, they could bring it back into service if they wanted. It's unlikely this will happen though.


In a siding we got to see one of the modern passenger trains. These were custom-made for the museum, as the original trains - one of which was parked up at a station platform - are too old to run and in any case were never designed for passengers. I remember a journalist doing a piece from the railway in the nineties, insisting upon travelling in the train like a mail sack and ending up with broken ribs after the journey.


In some places the railway dips under the River Fleet, itself an underground river. The water slowly drips through the tunnels forming impressive displays of stalactites.


It was a fascinating visit and well worth the price of admission. Tours still run regularly.


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