Get a sneak peek inside the Postal Museum Store with a behind the scene tour

What is the Postal Museum Store?

There are not many things that will convince me to travel from one end of the Central Line to the other, but a chance to explore the Postal Museum Store in Debden is definitely one of them.

Entering the Postal Museum Store feels a bit like stepping into a time capsule. Hidden away in an industrial estate in Loughton, this vast archive houses some of the largest objects in the Postal Museum's collection. Anyone fascinated by London's transport history is in for a treat, with rare mobile post offices, wartime vehicles and even surviving prototypes that helped pave the way for Mail Rail.

While the Postal Museum in Farringdon has become one of London's most unusual museums, and perhaps one of the quirkiest attractions thanks to its underground Mail Rail ride, many visitors don't realise there is a second site. The Postal Museum Store is where thousands of historic Royal Mail artefacts are preserved, including items simply too large to display in the main museum.

What can you see on the behind the scene tour?

As soon as we enter, it becomes clear that this is not a traditional museum, but rather a working archive that has temporarily opened its doors to visitors.

The expert guides, real trove of knowledge, lead us around the collection, sharing stories behind some of the most significant objects in the archive. The guided portion lasts around an hour before visitors are given time to wander freely and take a closer look at the exhibits.

It quickly becomes obvious why many of these objects cannot be displayed at the main museum. Some are enormous, including horse-drawn postal carriages, a mobile post office, railway sorting carriages and vehicles designed to deliver mail to some of Britain's most remote places.

One of the best things about visiting the store is how close you can get to the exhibits. Unlike most museums, many items are not behind glass, giving the experience a genuine archive feel. Do note, however, that exhibits are generally not labelled, so you'll want to make the most of the guides and ask plenty of questions.

Top exhibits to look out for on the tour

At first, the collection may seem somewhat scattered, but there is actually a clear logic to how everything is arranged. One of the largest sections focuses on the vehicles that kept Britain's postal service moving through the decades.

Our highlight of the behind the scenes tour include:

The mobile post office trailer

Perhaps the most impressive object in the collection, this fully operational travelling post office was used during and after the Second World War. When bomb damage disrupted local communications and postal services, these mobile units could be dispatched wherever they were needed, allowing people to send letters, access postal services and even make phone calls. 

The Morris Z Van

Known as the workforce of World War II, the Morris Z Van carried out delivery, collection and transportation duties. We were surprise to see there’s only one seat inside the vehicle, the driver’s seat.

Royal Mail Land Rovers

Those were particularly useful in Scotland where remote locations and extreme weather often made deliveries difficult. Their off-road capabilities allowed Royal Mail to reach communities that would otherwise have been inaccessible.

TV detector van

The TV detector van is probably one of the store's most popular exhibits, recently made famous on TikTok. This vehicle was used from the 1950s to detect TV signals, as back then TV licenses were issued by the Post Office. Whether they detected television signals or simply spooked people to pay for their licences remains a mystery, but it’s believed the antennas on top of the van could detect electromagnetic TV signals.

Post Office railway carriages

This is where postal workers would sort out mail while travelling across the country at large speed. The carriages’ wooden frames still bear chalk markings showing the destinations that mail would have been sorted into. When visiting, a fun challenge is to try to guess where those locations were. 

When trains carrying mail didn’t have time to stop, trackside nets could be used to collect or dispatch mailbags that had been placed on the side of the train. You can see examples of this system at the Postal Museum, where you can even try your hand at sorting mail inside a replica carriage. The two museums complement each other well, so we recommend pairing them together.

Pneumatic carriages, the ancestor of the Mail Rail

Long before the Mail Rail opened beneath London's streets, engineers experimented with pneumatic railways that used air pressure to move vehicles through underground tubes. The technology was first trialled at the Central Telegraph Office before expanding across parts of London. Although the concept showed promise, technical difficulties and high operating costs limited its success.

Several surviving components from these early experiments were later excavated and parts of the original carriages can now be seen at the Postal Museum Store, offering a fascinating glimpse into the first attempts into launching the Mail Rail.