What Visitors Say
The museum and Mail Rail train ride are situated behind the Royal Mail Mount Pleasent building, but in two different buildings. The walk between the two is 2-3 minutes. Best is to do the train ride 1st, this one beeing time related one. On weekend it can get crowded especially from noon onwards. The train ride is nice and explains how the rail system was built, it's history and how it operated till 2003 when it got shot down. It could be a little longer though. Tall people might feel cramped on the ride but still worth doing it. Next to the train ride you have toilets and children play area. The Postal Museum is interesting.
We Visited on Thursday 12th February and went here after first enjoying the Mail Rail. I was once again pleased about all the interactive displays. There wre so many touch screens and activities. The ones I enjoyed the most were the telephone booths (calling each other was fun), sending messages through the vacuum tubes, watching the films (especially the post office cats) and designing my own stamp. We ate lunch in the cafe which was a pleasant surprise, it was a bit crowded and untidy but our food was lovely and tasty, as were the drinks. We enjoyed the Cumberland Bap and Eggs Benedict. The general area of London which the museum is in is quite nice, I would recommend taking a little walk around. There is a large Royal Mail Depot just a few minutes away and you can watch all the lorries coming and going. We travelled to London on a coach trip.
Lovely experience at the Postal Museum. Mail Rail was a great way to start. Went as a family of 4 including 3 year old twin toddlers. They loved the Mail Rail though warning it is a bit of a cramped space so younger children may be a bit scared. That said the museum provides sensory bags to those who may need it which is a long addition. The exhibit itself was smaller than I realised but informative. Lots of interactive exhibits for kids. Staff are very friendly. Cafe was ok prices are expensive so bring your own lunch.
Oh that's a very nice museum. Worth a visit. A great story of emerging the post be informed that if you buy a ticket for time the train goes from another building which is just the opposite
This building is separate from the mail rail which is on the other side of the road. The postal museum runs through the history of the Post from the 17th century to the present date. The displays are very interactive and excellent for families with young children. It is also very informative for adults aswell. There are good facilities here, with options to eat and drink here too. Well worth a visit.
Highlights
Mail Rail Ride
London’s secret postal railway, reborn as a rideFrom 1927 to 2003 a driverless railway rushed letters beneath rush hour. You now glide the same tunnels past platform projections of its 1930s heyday.
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.
Main Museum, Stamp & Design zone
Coach, Postmen & Pillar Boxes
From night-coach speed to street-corner convenienceMail coaches beat turnpikes; pillar boxes turned pavements into post offices. Uniforms and hardware show how public trust was built piece by piece.
Main Museum, Ground floor
War & the GPO
Keeping Britain talking under fireTelegrams, field post and an underground rail kept messages moving through blackouts and Blitz.
Main Museum, People & Stories
Sorted! Play Zone (Kids)
Role-play the whole postal journeyMini-posties scan, sort, load and deliver across a make-believe town—systems thinking disguised as play.
Main Museum (timed sessions)
Opening Hours
Fun Facts
The ‘secret’ railway wasn’t a Tube at all—it used 2-foot-gauge tracks and ran without drivers decades before the DLR or Elizabeth line automation.
Anthony Trollope, the Victorian novelist, worked for the Post Office and helped champion pillar boxes; your red street icon has literary DNA.
London briefly had blue pillar boxes in the 1930s for airmail—post a letter into a colour-coded shortcut to the skies.
The Colossus code-breaking computers were built by Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers at the GPO’s Dollis Hill lab—Britain’s wartime computing started inside ‘the Post’.
Before Mail Rail, London tried a Victorian underground ‘pneumatic post’ that literally fired canisters through tubes; it worked—until it didn’t—and was scrapped by the 1870s.
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