Mail Rail Ride
London’s secret postal railway, reborn as a ride
From 1927 to 2003 a driverless railway rushed letters beneath rush hour. You now glide the same tunnels past platform projections of its 1930s heyday.
Sit at the window and watch for the original station nameboards and trackside tools between projection stops.
📍 Rail Building (opposite main museum), lower level
Penny Black & Friends
The world’s first adhesive postage stamp (1840)
A tiny square that democratised long-distance love, business and news—and launched a design language still used today.
Compare the Penny Black to later colour issues; spot how anti-forgery ‘micro-details’ evolve.
📍 Main Museum, Stamp & Design zone
Coach, Postmen & Pillar Boxes
From night-coach speed to street-corner convenience
Mail coaches beat turnpikes; pillar boxes turned pavements into post offices. Uniforms and hardware show how public trust was built piece by piece.
Find the cast-iron maker’s plate on a box and read it like a passport stamp—place, date, foundry.
📍 Main Museum, Ground floor
War & the GPO
Keeping Britain talking under fire
Telegrams, field post and an underground rail kept messages moving through blackouts and Blitz.
Read one real telegram; imagine writing a reply with a 12-word limit—and the weight those words carried.
📍 Main Museum, People & Stories
Sorted! Play Zone (Kids)
Role-play the whole postal journey
Mini-posties scan, sort, load and deliver across a make-believe town—systems thinking disguised as play.
Do one full ‘mission’ end to end with your child, then let them lead the route the second time.
📍 Main Museum (timed sessions)
