Londoners will soon be able to enjoy a unique rail experience – by riding a train going along the disused Mail Rail line. This is of great interest to me as for many years I supplied staff to one of the main sites the mail left from.
The 6.5-mile track runs deep under the capital, criss-crossing Tube lines and formerly linking six sorting offices with mainline stations at Liverpool Street and Paddington. At most, the small, electric and driverless trains operated for 22 hours a day, employing 220 staff and carrying more than four million letters every day.
But in 2003, trains stopped running on the line as Royal Mail decided the system had become too expensive for the organisation to run.
Yet now, thanks to London’s Postal Museum, rail enthusiasts will be able to take a ride on the tracks and experience a part of the Underground that was previously hidden away from the view of the public.
