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The London Transport Museum's permanent galleries

Two hundred years of getting about London, and most of the vehicles can be climbed into.

HistoryUndergroundFamily friendlyPermanent

In London Transport Museum.

The route starts on the top floor and works down, chronologically. Victorian London first: wherries on a Thames crossed by two bridges, George Shillibeer's hail-and-ride omnibus of 1829, the horse trams from 1870 that were the first thing a working Londoner could afford. Then the world's first Underground, dug along the streets and roofed over, with Metropolitan locomotive No. 23 of 1866, the only engine left from it. Digging Deeper has the Greathead shield that made deep tunnels possible and a windowless carriage from the 1890 electric tube that passengers called the padded cell. On the Surface covers the buses, trams and trolleybuses from three hundred thousand working horses to the Routemaster. London by Design gathers the roundel, the Johnston alphabet, Beck's map and a 1938 tube car; London's transport at war has a station platform recreated during an air raid; Future Engineers is hands-on, with a spiral escalator Jesse Reno built at Holloway Road in 1906 and nobody ever used. All Aboard, on the ground and first floors, is a play zone of small vehicles for children under seven. The ticket is valid for a year.

Where
London Transport Museum, Covent Garden Piazza, WC2E 7BB
Nearest station
Covent Garden · 3 min walk

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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