WAYPOINTS: The London Postal Museum – A First Class Journey Underground
London’s Postal Museum and Mail Rail (Image: Damien Wilkinson)
With time to kill before a train departure, the opportunity arose to visit London’s Postal Museum and Mail Rail attraction.
Situated around ten minutes walk from Kings Cross station, the museum is located at Phoenix Place, WC1X 0DA, and housed in two buildings opposite each other.
The Delivery
I had pre-emptively booked tickets in advance for the popular Mail Rail miniature train ride. This ride provides a 15 minute immersive experience on some of the old underground narrow-gauge railway tracks in tunnels used to ferry mail around the Capital.
It’s a reasonably tight squeeze into the two person carriages (bags must be left in lockers on the platform side) and it is also a little cramped headroom wise.
The ride takes you on a journey on part of the six and a half mile network of now unused tunnels and passages around the Mount Pleasant site where the museum is based.
“Don’t expect any Indiana Jones style hurtling through loads of unused rail tracks whilst clinging onto the rail cart, but you will get a feel for the labyrinth of what is below the streets of London, as you are transported through history.”
The network, inspired by the Chicago Tunnel Company, connected the West and East ends of London, and had eight stations.
With some pauses on the ride to enjoy images and footage projected onto the platform tunnel walls, it’s a fascinating exploration of a bygone age which dates back to 1927, when the Mail Rail was first established.
Audio commentary piped into each rail carriage helps outline the history of the underground labyrinths right up to the closure of the railway in 2003, when it was deemed economically and operationally obsolete.
The journey vividly charts the rise and fall of the written word—tracking the era when mail was the lifeblood of communication through to its quiet retreat in the digital age. It’s a powerful reminder of how quickly our "essential" technologies can become museum pieces.
Some of the tunnel wall projections from the Mail Rail ride (Image: Damien Wilkinson)
A Sprawling Network
"At its peak, this driverless, automated labyrinth ferried 4 million letters through the heart of the City every single day—a sprawling, hidden engine of the British Empire."
There are displays of old equipment and paraphernalia with interactive guides directly after you alight the ride. You are then directed to the main museum, which is in the other building further up the road.
The exhibits are as high-energy as they are educational, featuring plenty of audio-visual bells and whistles to keep even the youngest visitors entertained.
London Postal Museum Exhibitions (Image: Damien Wilkinson)
Book Early
The Mail Rail miniature train was set up in 2017 and is a popular London attraction. Booking is advised, especially if you are wanting to go on the Mail Rail, and you will need to select a half-hour slot. We were fortunate on our visit to get onto one of the first rides, as its turned out that subsequent technical problems led to the cancellation of the rides for the rest of the day!
First Class Delivery
Given my train departure timing I spent around an hour across both sites but could easily have extended the stay.
It’s a very interesting, educational and fun experience of a mail network that I previously had no idea existed.
The staff at both sites were extremely helpful and friendly, making the visit as efficient and pleasurable as possible.
It does make you think about the sprawling network of the now unused lines spread across London and whether anything can be done with them, in what is another aspect of London’s hidden past.
Narrow-gauge carriages of the London Mail Rail entering the historic underground tunnels at Mount Pleasant. (Image: Damien Wilkinson)
I’d also recommend the Hidden London tours which take visitors into abandoned or restricted parts of the London Underground network. Keep an eye out for a forthcoming blog post on my previous visit to Baker Street station.
