See London in a whole new way with a ride on the Mail Rail…

We’ve seen London from above, we’ve seen London from the streets and we’ve seen (what we can) from below on the London Underground. But what if we told you there was a whole new way to see beneath the surface of London’s streets? You can now take a ride on London’s Mail Rail – secret railway which was used by the Post Office over a hundred years ago.

This secret London railway stretches from Paddington to Whitechapel over a six and a half mile radius and was used to link post offices across the city. The driverless electric line used to carry up to four million letters a day until it was shut down in 2003 after 75 years of service.

For the past fourteen years the Mail Rail tunnels have been dealthy silent, but now it is back in service- though not for carrying letters. Instead it is being opened as part of the brand new Postal Museum, where you can ride on the train yourself discovering a whole hidden part of the city.

The Museum itself is situated by the Mount Pleasant Sorting Office in Clerkenwell and charts over 500 years of the British Postal service, with original Penny black stamps and a five-wheeled post bike which used to be one of their main methods of transport for getting letters and parcels round the city. You can then head underground (even deeper than the tube) for a fifteen minute journey and ride the route the Mail Rail used to take, learning all about the byegone era of postal trade, witnessing the roof of the interwar tunnel and an insight into the lives of the men who used to work down there.

Find out more and book your ticket for the Mail Rail here