0
0
The Acton Depot was opened up to the public twice a year and Jon had got tickets for us to go and see behind the scenes. We weren’t sure what to expect … apart from seeing a load of trains and trainspotters!
We did wonder what we’d let ourselves in for – we were walking towards the depot and a man walking towards us was carrying a huge pile of the tube maps (the ones that are in the tube trains so you know where you are!) on his shoulders. We were in real trainspotting territory!
It wasn’t overly busy, but plenty of people that knew their stuff. The depot holds a huge amount of stuff – everything that has been collected over the years and not on display at the Transport Museum in Covent Garden. Old tube carriages from the turn of the century (the 19th to 20th Century!). The actual carriage design hasn’t changed too much over the years.
There was so much memorabilia around, you couldn’t really take it all in. Various stalls around the place were selling items off – from tube maps, to the marquette fabric (and furniture covered in it) to luggage shelves to coins and stamps.
There are also a load of old vehicles; buses, taxis, trams and more from way back when.
The Police were also there with a couple of old Police Cars … and Callum got the chance to sit in them.
A chap was giving a demonstration of how the old bus ticketing machines worked. It was really hard work to validate the tickets!
It was great to see how the tube maps and signs had developed and evolved over time.
 Callum was also pleased to be reunited with one of the buses from the Routemaster Trail a few years back.
Outside the depot, they had a little narrow gauge train track running miniature steam engines.
We didn’t know if there were any restaurants locally to Acton so we decided to head back into London and see if we could get a table at The Big Easy on the King’s Road.
