Plans are afoot to take a disused underground mail line in London and transform it into a tourist attraction.
The London Post Office Railway – known as the mail rail – was approved by an Act of Parliament 100 years ago and in its heyday would carry 12 million postal items a day between Whitechapel and Paddington, but it was shut down bar a skeleton staff for maintenance purposes a decade ago.
Plans include using a converted mail train to carry passengers through the 6.5m (10.5km) underground network in tunnels 7ft (2.1m) in diameter for a mail rail experience as part of a new £22m British Postal Museum charting 400 years of social and communications history.
The proposals submitted to Islington Council would see visitors board trains at Mount Pleasant and ride a section of the tunnels, though for this to be successful the team behind it need to raise £2m from sponsors by the end of March to secure Heritage Lottery Funding.
New York’s High Line saved an abandoned 1930s elevated railway and reinvented into a linear park, which is one suggestion for the disused Royal Mail tunnel. In 2012, London Mayor, Boris Johnson launched a green infrastructure competition which was won by London-based architectural firm Fletcher Priest, which suggested an underground mushroom park could be built along the length of the tunnel.
Islington Council is expected to make a decision on proposals next month and if approved, the attraction would be fully open by 2020.
More information on linear parks is available on p17 of the
Leisure Handbook 2014 available online here.
