For seventy-six years , starting from 1927 , the London Post Office operated a fleet of driverless electrical trains that scuttled to a greater extent than or less pairs of narrow approximate rails deep nether the soil hauling mails betwixt diverse sorting offices. The Mail Rail ran from the Paddington Head District Sorting Office inward the due west to the Eastern Head District Sorting Office at Whitechapel inward the E , a distance of 6.5 miles. In betwixt , it had viii stations , the largest of which was underneath Mount Pleasant. At its peak , the Mail Rail operated for 22 hours a twenty-four hr current as well as carried 4 i M m pieces of post service inward a unmarried day.
Photo credit: Miles Willis/ The Postal Museum as well as Mail Rail
The cloak-and-dagger railway was built to circumvent the massive route traffic congestion of the early on 1900s that was causing unacceptable delays inward moving mails from i sorting component to another. Until 2003 , it was the beating oculus of London’s postal service. The arrangement was eventually shut because its functioning toll had give-up the ghost far besides much for the Royal Mail to bear. Using the railway , they said , was 5 times to a greater extent than expensive than using route carry for the same task.
The Mail Rail is laid upwards to opened upwards i time again inward September 2017 , only this fourth dimension it volition deed people instead of mail. When Mail Rail opens to the populace inward a few months , visitors volition last able to convey a 20-minute ride on 1 km of circular rail , sitting on novel wagons designed to accommodate people instead of mails.
Photo credit: Miles Willis/ The Postal Museum as well as Mail Rail
Photo credit: Miles Willis/ The Postal Museum as well as Mail Rail
Photo credit: Miles Willis/ The Postal Museum as well as Mail Rail
