Mail Rail: London's best new train line

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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For almost 80 years, starting way back in 1927, a fleet of driverless electric trains traversed 6.5 miles of narrow gauge rail deep below central London. At the system's peak, the trains operated for 22 hours per day, hauling tons of mail between the Paddington sorting office in the west, Mount Pleasant sorting office and depot in the middle, and the Whitechapel eastern delivery office, with a few smaller stops in between.

Royal Mail eventually closed the system in 2003, stating that operational costs were five times higher than using road transport for the same task—which is beautifully ironic, as the London Post Office Railway was originally built because of massive road traffic congestion in the early 1900s.

From September 2017, the Mail Rail will ride again—but it'll carry people rather than post. You should book now. Like, right now, before you finish reading the story. Tickets are selling very quickly, and the train line's throughput is very low.

The Mail Rail's most recent rolling stock was built way back in 1980; it didn't have any seats, nor was it really rated for human transportation through some rather rough-looking tunnels. So, the Postal Museum—the charity that now operates the railway—commissioned some brand-new trains. The trains are formed of three carriages, with a total of six pods that are each theoretically capable of carrying four adults, but only if you're okay with a stranger sitting on your lap. I was seated in a pod with just one other person and it already felt really cramped, but four children would probably be okay. Likewise, if you're over six foot, your head will hit the clear plastic panels that form the roof of each carriage.

While the original Mail Rail locomotives were powered by an electrified third rail, the new trains are battery powered. Somewhat oddly, the batteries were right there in the middle of the train for me to gawk at. I wasn't allowed to poke around too much (dead journalists are bad for PR), but they looked like 12 normal car batteries in serial. Sadly, by the time the Mail Rail opens to the public in September, I suspect the health-and-safety inspector will have ordered the batteries to be covered up.
The ride itself lasts for about 15 minutes, which is probably about as long as you want to be cooped up in a dark, tiny enclosure deep underground. A narrator tells you some interesting things about the Mail Rail as you slowly rumble along the tracks. The train stops twice at some smaller stations, where some fancy projectors cover the walls in video. There are so many weird signs and junctions and side tunnels and things that it's quite tough to take it all in. Most of the tunnels are wide enough for two trains, and some of the stations feel big enough that you could almost be on the London Underground, but there's at least one stretch of single-track tunnel that is super-narrow and claustrophobic.

In a word, Mail Rail is awesome, and if you're at all interested in trains, history, London, or just cool stuff, you should check it out. My only misgiving is that the ride itself could do with a bit more detail. The video presentations are clearly designed for kids and generic tourists; the narrator provides some flavour, but there's so much more to be learned.

But wait, there's more!

While the Mail Rail is the centrepiece of the new Postal Museum, your ticket will also get you into two other exhibits. Next to the Mail Rail is a room filled with mementos and curios, including all four generations of locomotive and rolling stock. There's an early switching board, which would've been used to remotely control trains on the line—and opposite, a model of the railway, replete with relays, where you can try and drive a mail train yourself. In one corner there's a giant net, which was apparently used to catch mail bags as they were flung from the trains onto station platforms.

The whole space used to be the Mail Rail's workshop, and while the brick walls have been scrubbed and a new floor has been put down, it still feels quite industrial. There's a high vaulted ceiling with exposed cables and pipes running along gantries and ducts, and some original features like the controller's raised platform have been preserved.

Back upstairs and across the road there's a more general postal museum, which takes you on a journey through the various ages of the Royal Mail: from its inception under Henry VII in 1516, to the first Penny Black stamps in 1840, to the arrival of the Royal Mail Post Bus—a service that picked you up at home and dropped you off in town, for a small fee. There's even an exhibit dedicated to that famous story of an escaped lioness attacking a mail coach, only to be fended off by a dog.

Both the Mail Rail workshop and Royal Mail museum are quite small, but that's not necessarily a bad thing: there's a high density of interesting exhibits, and you'll be through the whole thing in about 90 minutes.

Tickets for the Postal Museum, including the Mail Rail, cost £16 for adults and £8 for children under 16. Rather awkwardly, the general postal museum building opens today (July 28), but the Mail Rail building won't open until September 4. So you might want to hold off visiting until then. The nearest train/tube stations are Russel Square, Kings Cross, and Farringdon.

[Lounge Lizard]

Why this abuse of the English language ?
It's a f***ing railway line not a f***ing train line.

[malcolm3011]

At least on this line if you can't get a seat you won't have to stand

[clashcityrocker]

Why did the union agree to driverless trains?
Why wasn't there a driver and a guard like on all those Southern Rail trains?

Once again the CWU has let down the trade union movement.