When the LTM reopened after its 2007 refit, a mannequin of Sam Mullins had secretly been made using photographs supplied by his wife, and then placed in the ‘Q23’ car to be revealed to him as a surprise. Today, it can be found in the former City of London ‘padded-cell’ car on the ground floor – seen on July 21 next to the real Sam.
CHRISTOPHER WESTCOTT
IWAS first introduced to Sam Mullins at the Buckinghamshire Railway during an event celebrating London Underground’s 150th anniversary a decade ago. Since then, whenever we have met, I have come to recognise Sam’s quiet, friendly, gentle and authoritative demeanour.
This summer, we sat down inside ‘Q23’ car No. 4248, located on the raised ‘Train Table’ that is a key feature of the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden. Similarly, since joining as the museum’s director in November 1994, Sam Mullins has played a key role in the development of the LTM.
Sam had previously been a director of local authority museums in St Albans and was looking for a new challenge in London, but never expected to remain for quite so long.
“When I arrived, I was really taken with the fact that this was already a good museum. It had just been redisplayed, and these mezzanine floors had been added by my predecessor Andrew Scott in 1993. The museum was in good shape.”
But there was still much work to do. In the early 1990s, items not being exhibited at the flagship Covent Garden Museum were in storage in numerous locations across London. Examples included a bus garage at Ash Grove and, bizarrely, an electricity sub-station in Hendon. Sam had been given the remit by London Regional Transport, the predecessor to Transport for London, to sort out the back of house and construct a single store to conserve these items safely and securely. First, however, was the issue of locating a site.
This is the configuration of the Covent Garden museum that Sam inherited in 1994, looking across the main bus area in 2001 towards the first-floor mezzanine that includes ‘Q’ Stock car No. 4248.
RD KALINA/LTM COLLECTION
Building Acton depot
“The important thing about the museum depot at Acton was I stuck to my guns. I was offered all sorts of other leaking roof, pigeoninfested bus garages because in 1994 – when all the buses were privatised – none of the bus companies wanted to take on the premises. Now they’re all desperate to have them.”
But why build a museum depot at Acton? With the museum having a tradition of operating its heritage vehicles, Sam was firmly of the opinion that the public did not want to see a dead static line-up of vehicles. Instead, he took the view that they preferred to ride on them, feel the vibrations, feel the fabric, and get the whole experience. He therefore wanted a site that had road access for buses, but also with a physical connection to the Underground railway.
Being immediately opposite Acton Town station, the museum depot site was accessible by road from Gunnersbury Lane. However, it was the District Line’s Ealing Common depot to the rear of the plot that confirmed its suitability, offering the unique opportunity to connect the depot to the railway.