The Post Office Railway (aka Mail Rail)
Soon after finding 28 and skipping past all the Pystock and several reports (places i also visited) i started to dig a little deeper and it was here i started to find a few of the deeper and more involved projects such as Burlington, the LU infiltration and Mail Rail. Mail Rail really stood out for me and then i soon found it written about on place hacking, the old silentuk website. I never quite understood the possible doubting of its existence as it was mentioned in a couple of places, by this point the pictures were all over Sub Brit, it had been used in a Bruce Willis film and theres a big glaring sign at Mt Pleasant that reads ‘Post Office Railway’. Im not sure why it peaked my interest but it did. I guess tiny railway tracks are kinda special.
It seemed to then not really be touched for a while after the train being derailed there and the clusterfuck that ensued, sometime in 2013 i stuck up a lead about the possibility of it being doable. Not long later news filtered out the SNC popped their heads in, I’m not sure if they ever used the lead or it was just a coincidence. At the time i was proper pissed that i missed the opportunity, but to be fair i never went for it back then, the SNC did, they took the opportunity and props to them, those guys are pushing some boundaries that don’t seem able to be broken, huge respect lads.
Then in 2014 Kev and BHG managed to find a way in, again it wound me up that i had missed the opportunity but again massive props to them both, another couple of explorers who are pushing the limits of whats possible.
Over the past 2 and half years or so i can’t recall the times i have walked the route trying to spot any sort of weakness, the times I’ve been out and have made a couple of mile detour to check a sorting office. The times I’ve gone on dates and purposefully made plans close to somewhere worth checking. The hours i had spent in the archives digging through all sorts of plans, blueprints, flyers and all sorts of other crap looking for anything that might aid my efforts. I was still trying to piece together everything i read from place hacking, silentuk, sub brit, guerrilla exploring, the archives and from what id actually spoken to people about.
Some plans i managed to photograph to try and piece together everything i could.
Doesn’t actually say anything about not derailing trains to be fair...
I wish i could say it was my mad exploring skills that got me inside but sadly it wasn’t, a glitch was discovered by someone else and i got tipped off, thats it. I can’t claim really any credit for the rediscovery of Mail Rail in 2015 but i like to think if it wasn’t constantly in my head and i hadn’t of put in a lot of effort over the past few years then perhaps it wouldn’t of happened. I must add i also got a little sick of turning up every other week at Mt Pleasant to see more and more of the little trains above the ground and the access wide open but flanked by security with alsatians, not to mention once we had to high 5 each other for not letting one of the group die and descending down a lift shaft in almost pitch black because a door at the bottom was open, the door that ended up not getting us in, that was the night where the most amount of effort was ever given.
Judging from old photos there seem to be a lot more cameras, sensors, PIRs, Infa reds and alarms than before, but i suppose its being worked on so what do you expect. I actually paid two visits while it was open and did a good half of it the first time, felt pretty ecstatic about it but then returned a couple of days later to finish off the other half, i mean how many opputunityies do you get, at least a few in my case apparently. I often felt very far away from danger and only really at Mt Pleasant and possibly Whitechapel where we could hear workers not too far above us did we ever really feel uneasy. Running the platforms at Mt Pleasant was tragically exciting and a little fucking scary.
I think we all know the history by now, mothballed in 2003, derp ever since, museum coming your way next year. Mail Rail. Now from West to East, the whole line.
Paddington
The lights were off in a few of the stations which meant photographing them was a bit difficult. Paddington being one of them. By far the most interesting part of Paddington was finding some of the trains parked up in the sidings.
Bird Street Western Parcels Office
The next station going east is Bird Street, there don’t really seem to be any cameras for this station, one of the derp stations.
Wimpole Street Old Western Delivery Office
Another derp station with less to see than some of the other major stations but there was this nice green train parked up in the eastbound portal.
Rathbone Place Western Delivery Office
Rathbone no longer looks as nice as it used because of a huge breeze block wall dividing some mail chutes from the platforms. Its also the most recent of all the stations, built a few decades after the rest of the line.
To be continued....
