Acton Depot Revisited
Just a quicky, because I covered this topic a few months ago, here. Acton Depot is London Transport Museum’s storage warehouse. Enthused by my first visit and encouraged by London Historians member David Burnell who is a volunteer guide at Acton Depot, we organised a special guided tour for our members which took place yesterday. David and his colleague Niall took us on a three hour detailed tour of the facility. It was fascinating, and yet in many ways we barely scratched the surface. For me the best bits – something I missed last time – were the posters and commissioned artwork which promoted the network. There are over 30,000 items in the collection, so we only saw a tiny fraction. But such treasure! The moving force behind this in the early days was the legendary Frank Pick who commissioned arts graduates and leading artists alike (Paul Nash, Man Ray and others). All of the collection has been digitised and can be searched and viewed on the LTM website.
My only criticism of Acton Depot – not their fault – is lack of pubs in the immediate vicinity! So we hopped two stations down the District Line to Turnham Green and had a convivial sesh in the London Historians custom at the excellent Tabard in Chiswick.
Acton Depot is next open to the public on the weekend of 8-9 October. London Historians next guided event is Kensal Green Cemetery on 18 September.
Readers of Mike’s blog on the LT Museum Depot may wish to know that the Museum plans dedicated tours of the extensive poster collection and also the art room where are contained many of the orginal art works commissioned by Pick.
The tours will be conducted by specially trained and enthused guides such as myself.
Look out for information on the tours which start in the late Autumn on the L T Museum web site
Acton Depot guided tours take place on the last Friday and Saturday of each month at 11am and 2pm, for details and to book call the London Transport Museum on 0207 565 7298.