London Transport Museum Depot (Acton)

I had already visited the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden (you can read that here) and mentioned that there was a bit too much history for one building. When I went to the LT Museum, I thought it would make sense to become a “friend” of the museum which is the membership scheme. In the past, that “friend” status gave unlimited access for a year but that is now included within the normal price so the benefits have been changed a bit. One of the benefits now is one visit to the museum depot open weekends.

The LT Museum depot is out in Acton (the closest station is Acton Town) and is open every so often for guided tours and open weekends to allow people to wander about at their leisure. The depot has a little youtube playlist here too.

As enjoyable as the museum in Covent Garden is, it is very accessible which makes it a little less technical than might be wanted by some^[1] so it is good that the depot allows you to see the real thing in a workshop style environment. It is still quite child-friendly with model trains, and children's activities.

I would imagine that the open weekends are slightly different each time with changing themes but I would think the overall layout is consistent – these are pretty big objects! There is a lot of detail and thought put into the store and you can see that the volunteers and friends are doing so with enjoyment at seeing other people enjoy it. The front of the depot has a number of little stalls selling bits and bobs from collections such as old timetables, maps and postcards. They are quite fun actually, but I can imagine it would be more fun for those that have a memory of London's history. One of the nice things walking around generally was that attack of nostalgia that others got from the objects -

“Oh wow! I remember these from...”

was probably the most common refrain. Brilliant.
There is a little section upstairs with a load of enamel signs – including some very old station ones that have changed name and a load of network maps too.

The back end of the depot has the vehicles which have to be the main reason people come and the biggest draw. There are a lot of old train carriages where you can see the old style seating and the wooden flooring. As I remember some of them from my youth, it was quite memorable as we sometimes had to get the old red trains on the Northern line. The red colour feels much more luxurious^[2] than I remember though – I think the restoration is to as new rather than my memory. The depot also has loads of old buses too which are quite nice but I don't have such strong memories of those – and this has to be seen as an exercise in nostalgia.
Outside the depot, there is also some further space where, on this occasion, there was the famous Met 353 carriage and locomotive that I rode on as part of the Tube 150 celebrations as well as a strange “SuperCar” from the Epping and Ongar Railway.

There was also a bit where they were making sales of depot items where I bought some Metropolitan train luggage racks and Bakerloo seat covers. They had other things too so it would be great if you want some memorabilia such as actual bus blind boxes and drivers' seats. In the depot itself, there is another shop which is a little like the lesser version of the museum shop for more conventional items too.

It was a pretty fun day and it was nice that it was both a little more technical and suitable for families – though the parents were having a bit too much fun to say it was just for kids.

^{1. By some, not that many, obviously. I have no doubt that an accessible museum is better overall seeing how many people go in there.↩}

^{2. To be honest, the weather was quite good and the lighting meant the paint jobs looked great – I also don't remember the buses being such a brilliant red. ↩}