The Postal Museum

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A national postal museum, due to open in London next year with the help of a £4.5m Heritage Lottery Fund grant, will take visitors on a ride through history along part of the old Post Office Underground Railway.

Visitors to the Postal Museum in Mount Pleasant will be able to travel through a renovated section of the railway, which once transported the city's post bags and was known as Mail Rail. The trains are much smaller than those on the London underground, but the stations are built in a similar style, with circular walls.

The underground service operated for 75 years, carrying up to six million bags of mail per year at its peak, but by the late 1990's it had became uneconomical to run and was eventually closed in 2003.

Mail Rail will be back on track as part of the museum project taking visitors on a journey through the changing face of the postal service through the ages, from the reign of King Charles I to the present.

Among the exhibits on show at the museum will be a first edition of James Joyce's Ulysses, original evidence from the Great Train Robbery trial and flintlock pistols used to defend Mail Coaches in the 19th Century.

"This world-class, sustainable museum will highlight the important story of our universally recognisable postal service," says Adrian Steel, director of the British Postal Museum & Archive. "We have been given the green light to open up these unique tunnels to the public and reveal the captivating story of Mail Rail. This is a major boost to our plans and we look forward to welcoming our first visitors in 2016."

Find out more from the British Postal Museum and Archive

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