Today I grabbed the rare chance of a two-hour guided tour around the London Transport Museum's private depot at Acton Town. No trainspotter jokes please. It holds a massive amount of archive material and restored vehicles for which there is no room in the Museum's Covent Garden premises, from one of the first deep-tube railway engines from 1890 down to collections of railway silverware! Much of this collection is only available to the public on the guided tours, which happen about six times a year. When the old British Transport Museum in Clapham was closed down, much of the engine stock went to the York Railway Museum, and pretty much everything else went to Covent Garden. This Acton Town facility, though, is only four or so years old and was purpose-built on the site of the old Ealing Common overhaul yards to store the overflow of the archives; all humidity and temperature controlled and so on. Masses of stuff. No one person could be equally interested in all of it. It's the design shapes of the vehicles and the iconography of the signs and posters that really got me into this. I don't know enough about the engines to know or be very bothered which model of engine drove a Routemaster bus, for example, but it's a pretty harmless hobby for those who are really into those details, so why not? In one drawer in the Small Items department was a specimen of the die-cast model London bus I was given as a child; one of the best things I ever received, with working, lever-operated centre doors and a huge, balloon-festooned "Swinging London - Carnaby Street" banner on one side...which certainly dates it. Aye, they made 'em proper in them days.
Just for overkill's sake, got some more use out of the London Pass at the Covent Garden museum straight after Acton Town. Nice, but everything is taking too long, there's too much to immerse yourself in at every place. By the time I'd done all of that, and looked into a few more shops in Regent Street and Piccadilly, there was only time to grab a quick early-evening snack, post some postcards and head for Brentford. More tomorrow, no doubt.
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