July 12, 2025
I have wanted to ride this silly mail train for years, and finally found the time. 
The Post Office Railway—commonly known as “Mail Rail”—was an automatic narrow-gauge, electric railway created to speed Royal Mail delivery in London by bypassing the city’s congested streets. It was built by the Post Office with assistance from the Underground Electric Railway Company of London to transport mail between sorting offices. In the 2000s, Royal Mail deep-sixed the system, and the site became a museum.
In the early 20th century, Royal Mail officials sought a way to make deliveries faster. They looked to Chicago’s subterranean freight train system. In 1927, after more than a decade of planning and work, the Post Office Railway opened for business. At its height, the system conveyed four million pieces of mail down a 6.5-mile underground stretch of track at speeds approaching 40 miles per hour with termini at Paddington and Whitechapel.
Its stations are closer to the surface than the tunnels, which were dug at a depth of 70 feet below the surface. This allowed workers to bring mail to the surface easily, and the incline allowed for gravity-powered propulsion and braking.
The line ran from Paddington Head District Sorting Office in the west to the Eastern Head District Sorting Office at Whitechapel in the east, a distance of 6.5 miles.. It had eight stations, the largest of which was underneath Mount Pleasant, but by 2003, only three stations remained in use because the sorting offices above the other stations had been relocated
In April 2011, an urban exploration group called the “Consolidation Crew” published accounts of illicit access to the tunnels. Detailed photography and text revealed that the railway is still mainly in good condition, despite some natural decay. In July of 2017, the site was turned into the Postal Museum, complete with a 20-minute ride on specially made miniature trains.
At a certain point on the tour, the train stops, and you are given a fun little explanation of the history of the postal service.
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Once we disembarked, I had a chance to take a picture of the overall screen that the crew watches at the start. Although blurry, you can see on the small screen that the trip is a loop. There was never any sensation that we had made that loop, so it was surprising to arrive back where we started.
Some sights from the museum.
A 90-year-old maintenance train
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