Covent Garden is a favorite destination of ours in London. No trip to London is complete for Mrs A|T without a visit to her favorite stationary and T-Shirt stores. I love it for all of the great food [averagetraveller.com] in the area plus the London Transport Museum [www.ltmuseum.co.uk].
London has many great museums and most of them have no admission fee. Unfortunately the London Transport Museum is not one of them. A ticket to get you past the gift shop will run you £13:50, but it’s good for a full year. If the entrance fee rubs you the wrong way then the gift shop is actually quite nice on its own, as I discovered on my first two trips to London.
A trip through the museum sends you up a time machine elevator where the display counts you back towards 19th century London on the 2nd floor. It was a cute gimmick but I actually preferred seeing a children’s tour that actually had them crawl one at a time through a swirly time machine cloth tube with period costumed tour guides at the end. Sometimes low tech is better.
As you work your way back downstairs you move forwards in time from horse drawn carriages, to above ground rail, below ground rail, transport during the wars, through today and into tomorrow. For a casual visitor you could probably see everything in a couple of hours, but anyone with an interest in history and transport should allow at least half a day.
This post was submitted to Travel Photo Thursday, a weekly collection of photos by travel bloggers from around the world. Be sure to check it out at Budget Traveler’s Sandbox [budgettravelerssandbox.com].
A model showing how they dug the tunnels for the underground railways:
Railway maps from before they developed the modern simplified map.
Interior models from the swinging 60′s.
False advertising.
Take a ride on the Northern Line
Fancy new double decker buses
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Interesting article
Great seeing these. I still remember HogKong in ’74 with all the old double decker buses similar to the first. I think when London re-vamped its bus fleet in late 60′s all their buses were sent out there.
Isn’t the underground like really hot and crowded in Summer? I love the underground in winter though, saves you from the traffic on street level.
Love the transport museum in London! the art is so fun and it’s about travel!
Ah, London! London is where my heart is. I never visited this museum while I lived there, though! Glad I saw this post. Love the pic of the 60′s dolls in the tube!
I like it when blogs cover less obvious sights in the busy cities. This one I’ve actually visited. It’s an interesting museum and I liked the time machine lift.
It sounds like an interesting museum, but a pretty hefty price tag. I think I would like to go once, but wouldn’t use a season’s pass.
How fun! I never even knew of this museum! By the way, I also posted a London transportation pic from our recent trip there for Travel Photo Thursday
I find the history of transportation very interesting! Love those old double decker buses
I’ve never heard of this museum but you’ve done a nice rundown of it. Love the old railway maps and the language they use.
Nice shots, and it looks like a great museum to visit.
I love offbeat museums. Also love double-decker buses! They have them here in Berlin and I have such fun taking them.
Very nostalgic for me with those old buses, because the last time I rode on one of them, I was less than ten years old. I’m putting this museum on my list for a future trip to back to the country I was born in. Thanks for this informative and beautifully illustrated post, then.