Postal Museum planning £1 million upgrade to improve accessibility
The Postal Museum has outlined plans to create a virtual Mail Rail ride to open the tunnel experience to people who can’t ride their small trains through the narrow tunnels.
The Mail Rail tunnels were constructed a century ago as small freight trains for parcels and letters, and baring the occasional adventure weren’t designed for humans. When the Postal Museum opened the tunnels for tours, a series of specially designed trains were ordered, but it’s not been possible to make the ride accessible due to their small size.
The Postal Museum has outlined a £1m upgrade that will take place ahead of the Mail Rail’s centenary in 2027 and the Postal Museum’s 10th anniversary in its current location.
Central to the project is a new immersive projection space, which will be installed in Mail Rail’s original train Depot in late 2025. This will provide an audiovisual experience for visitors who do not want to or cannot ride on the Mail Rail trains.
The museum will also launch an accessible multimedia guide featuring British Sign Language (BSL) videos interpreting the ride’s audio for d/Deaf visitors. A new on-board audio narrative, played within the train’s carriages, will include audio description segments to improve the experience for blind and partially sighted visitors.
The ride’s visuals will be improved with new projection technology to enhance the quality of the two immersive shows on the platform stops on the route. A new show will be produced for Platform 1, featuring recollections from staff who worked on Mail Rail as well as insights into the role the railway played at the heart of a global communication network.
The lead project funder is the Post Office Remembrance Fellowship, and Arts Council England is supporting the capital works.
Glasgow-based digital media and software studio ISO Design have been appointed to produce the new film and audio content developed as part of the project, whilst DJW Projects will be responsible for installing the new audiovisual hardware, including projectors and media servers. Marcon Fit-out, based in Antrim, Northern Ireland, will construct the new immersive projection space.
Laura Wright, CEO of The Postal Museum said: “We’ve long wanted to improve the accessibility of Mail Rail for a much wider audience, particularly for those who are unable to ride our unique underground experience. We’re hugely grateful that through the support of the Post Office Remembrance Fellowship and Arts Council England, Enhancing Mail Rail will deliver significant improvements. Crucially, this generous support enables us to develop and deliver these upgrades in close partnership with the audiences they will serve.”
The Postal Museum itself is really disappointing.
They have a massive archive of objects and material, which should have given us a world class museum befitting the country which invented the postage stamp and the modern mail system.
Instead we have something which seems more aimed at children.
It bears no comparison with other national postal museums.
I agree with Geoff. On my visit to the Postal Museum I left wondering ‘Is this all there is?’ I’d enjoyed riding on the train, but the museum itself was a distinct disappointment.