Mail Rail
“Secret. Abandoned. Forgotten” was the tagline the adverts gave shortly before the opening of Mail Rail to the public. One of the worst kept secrets in London, perhaps? Surely many had heard of this underground postal railway during its long history…
The Mail Rail began life in 1913 with the passing of the Post Office (London) Railway Bill. The new railway was to consist of six and a half miles of tunnels running between the West and East ends of London. However, the First World War delayed the construction and installation of operating equipment, and the first stretch of line did not open until 1927.
At its peak in the mid-20th Century, the driverless, electric narrow-gauge railway could carry around 4 million pieces of post a day. The Post Office Railway underwent major changes in the 1980s; as well as gaining modern rolling stock (to replace the trains that had been running since the 1930s), the name was changed to ‘Mail Rail’. The railway even had a starring role in the 1991 film Hudson Hawk (alongside Bruce Willis) as the fictional ‘Poste Vaticane’. Such stardom could not keep the railway running through declining use and closures/relocations of the above ground sorting-offices, leading to it closing in 2003.
Left pretty much as it was on the day it closed, the railway sat “mothballed” and sealed off, though urban explorers occasionally entered to find the abandoned locomotives and platforms. In the early 2010s, plans were formed to open the depot at Mount Pleasant as a museum, which finally opened in September 2017. As well as presenting the history of the railway and artefacts from the tunnels, visitors can enjoy the much-publicised short ride around the tunnels in specially designed (and slightly cramped) narrow-gauge carriages.
