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All the United Kingdom England London London Transport Museum Depot
AO Edited

London Transport Museum Depot

The majority of the museum's large collection is held in a storage space open to the public a few times a year.

London, England

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A look inside the Depot.   Ian Taylor
The London Museum of Transport’s Depot, an off-site storage space for the Museum’s collection.   Ewan Munro
Some of the vehicles on display at the Depot.   Mark Percy
A London Underground map from 1910 displayed at the Depot.   Ian Taylor
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About

Ordinarily a tour of a storage facility wouldn't be all that exciting. But the storage facility of London's Museum of Transport is something entirely different. The museum depot holds the 90 percent of the transport museum's collection that is not on display—a mishmash of some 320,000 items showing the history of London's transportation system.

Open to the public just twice a year, the nearly 65,000 square feet storage space gives a behind-the-scenes look at the museum's collection, its curation process, and its preservation. There, curators and volunteers catalog and conserve objects from the collection, which shows the evolution of urban transportation over the last 150 years.

Tours of the facility give an up-close look at the museum's poster collection, filled with transportation posters created by notable artists such as Man Ray and Edward McKnight Kauffer; its vehicle collection, including a restored 1938 Tube train; and a look at the design process involved in creating signage for the transit system.

The Museum of Transport describes the depot as providing "a living link of how London itself has evolved since the early 19th century." The story of how a city moves, how it gets its citizens from place-to-place, and the evolution of those methods is all part of a much larger story of technology, art, and industry in the European metropolis. 

Related Tags

Museums Transportation Design Trains Subways Art Technology Museums And Collections

Know Before You Go

Depot "Open Weekends" are held thrice a year, typically around April, July, and September. Guided tours are also available, must be pre-booked. Cost is £12.

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srfmoyle2010

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erjeffery, zydeko, Xoan, Snowdrop68...

  • erjeffery
  • zydeko
  • Xoan
  • Snowdrop68
  • Ashawnta

Published

October 18, 2017

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  • https://www.timeout.com/london/museums/london-transport-museum
London Transport Museum Depot
118-120 Gunnersbury Lane
Acton Town
London, England
United Kingdom
51.504703, -0.281223
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