The Postal Museum opened in 2017, and I find it difficult to believe that it's actually been that long! I gave charity to the museum and was able to get a tour of it before it was officially opened to the public and also before it was completely finished. (One of the last elements to add was a series of videos to display on the platform.) Visitors of the blog may remember that post, but here it is again: A First Look at the New Postal Museum. The Postal Museum re-opened to the public again after over eighteen months of being shut, and it was re-opened in August. Those who had donated were encouraged to return. As I had not yet seen the completed museum, I signed up to attend.
The visit was a "look at your leisure" of some of the static exhibits and information boards, a ride on the postal trains (adapted to take passengers instead of mail bags), and a walk on the rails through the tunnels to see the plaques printed out and nailed to the sleepers for the charity donations. These events are also quite good because all of the members have a story as to why they donated. Some are in memory of others - perhaps a lover of trains or in memory of someone who worked or were associated with these mail tunnels. One of the plaques is for an engagement of two postal workers.
There's quite a lot of re-development taking place in this part of London, and the land opposite Mount Vernon postal site (now the museum) is currently being re-developed. I was also happy to see a large mural on the side of a building here; it was commissioned by the Postal Museum, and the artist is Atma Art. I am not sure what the plans are for the development across the street.
The mail trains have been re-built for passengers. These would haul bags around. The mail tunnels were built to quickly send post through the network. Instead of this going above ground where there were delays, they engineered these series of tunnels underground. There were several stations along the way to send the post across London. I cannot remember how much post was sent per day, but there was a lot more than is sent today. The postal museum was in operation from Victorian times and ceased in the early 2000s. Remember that we did not have email or the Internet or fax machines readily available until more modern times, so any document or correspondence was sent via the post. This is a difficult concept for a lot of people living today to grasp.
Ops. We were told that the "west" and "east" signs had fallen off, and a colleague had put them up the wrong way.
We had a trip on the rail, which gradually passed by a platform. Some of the tunnels were used for Christmas parties, and children were also invited. A lot of people have contributed to the history of this museum as some of the workers are still alive.
The videos I mentioned in the introduction are a part of the rail journey. The train stops and displays a series of imagery and animations relating to each decade of the London post system.
On the way back through, a different video was shown. This depicted three different letters of correspondence that made their way through the system. One was a little girl who shared Queen Elizabeth's birthday and wrote her a letter. Another one was a journalist sending a letter to a writer. I cannot remember the third option. Most of the correspondence would be day-to-day and what we would send as emails now.
After the rail trip, we could look around at the static displays and also use some of the interactive displays - such as changing the signals (which I have never been able to get my head around) or sorting mail during a moving platform.
The final part of the visit was to walk through the tunnels. This requires a hard hat and being able to duck or crouch down at certain places where the tunnels are very low. It also requires stepping over the sleepers and track and signals and other equipment and simply watching steps not to trip.
As always, it was an insightful visit and a historically-important place that is probably under-stated. I think more videos about the history of the museum and exhibitions would be welcome. There's currently a postcard exhibition, and I think having some royal mail memorobilia on display would also be interesting and take it to a new level - stamps, advertisements, a postbox, special ink stamp, etc. Those who love the trains won't be disappointed, and perhaps a model train set showing the tunnels would be nice.
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