A little known railway that ran under Londoners’ feet for almost a century, its tunnels in places running within a few feet of packed underground commuter lines, will open to the public for the first time next year.
A £26m project backed by the Heritage Lottery Fund is rebuilding the Royal Mail museum at Mount Pleasant in central London to hold its vast collection and archives, and restoring a stretch of the railway as a visitor attraction.
The Mail Rail opened in 1927, the first driverless electric railway in the world, with trains running every five minutes at peak hours along a network of 22 miles of 2ft-gauge lines, shuttling mail safe from road traffic and weather between two main railway stations, Paddington and King’s Cross, and six major sorting offices.
It closed in 2003, mainly because most of the above ground sorting offices had been sold off, but a maintenance team of three, led by Darren Casey, now 44, who began working on the railway as an 18-year-old apprentice, has kept the tunnels dry and safe.
Casey originally joined a team of more than 200 engineers and maintenance workers. “It was hard work and long hours in shifts around the clock – but there was great camaraderie down here, it was a real team,” he recalled.
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