Riding the "Mail Rail"

An Excursion on the World's First Driverless Electric Underground Railway

// Long before Montreal's REM, Vancouver's Skytrain, São Paulo's Metro, and the many automated metro lines in the cities of Asia (not to forget all the People Movers in the world's amusement parks), an underground rail system was hustling beneath the streets of a major metropolis, powered by electricity, and without any human drivers in the lead cars. The Post Office Railway operated on 22 miles of track, north of the Thames River. In London, naturally: the city that pioneered trains-beneath-the-streets with the inauguration of the Metropolitan Railway—which ran wooden carriages, lit by gas, and hauled by steam locomotives, in tunnels—way back in 1863.

I had a couple of hours between meetings in London, so I rode the Piccadilly Line to Russell Square Station, and then walked for about 15 minutes to the site of the Postal Museum on Phoenix Place (casting a sidelong glance of yearning at the Charles Dickens Museum on the way). I'd put off my visit until late in the day, so I walked right past the main museum to the building with the "Mail Rail" sign on it.