LT Museum in trouble?

Perhaps I could chuck a few thoughts in. My partner and I visited the LT Museum a couple of weeks back for a colleagues evening event. Personally as far as exhibits are concerned I thought the place was near empty. You enter through this strange walkway, which seems a waste of space. The mapping idea which it’s supposed to depict is a very good idea. But it seems to be lost on the vast majority of visitors who happily plough past this and the Crossrail displays to enter the atrium beside a Wrights cut away double decker bus. The latter would have been better positioned facing towards visitors entering. But no, we get the back end of the display to greet us!

Then when in the Central Hall, you can see the Trains, but how do you get to them? Answer you head round the back of the tram to squeeze past the emergency exit and up some stairs. Or if your lucky you can enter the overhead walkway which is round the back of the large display and up to the walkway. The entrance to which we thought was for staff use only! Mala (my partner) kept tugging on my arm and saying – “Dont think we should be here”.
When you get to the trains they seem to be parked in an attic. Unless you really knew they were there you would walk around the lower atrium and back out the front door. Other than a German couple, we were the only people who visited them all night.

After a couple of soft drinks I decided to use the toilet. The stench in the Gents was perhaps the worst I had smelt in any public toilet. So bad in fact I decided not to dry my hands in an attempt to get out as quickly as possible. The kindly Museum helper standing outside offered me some tissues. Perhaps unappetisingly the food for the event was being brought out from the kitchen which appeared to be adjacent to these highly smelly toilets.


I accept they are trying to appeal to a wide range of tastes. But the exhibits are too thin on the ground to make any sense. It needs more pizzazz.

The site was ideally located when it moved from Syon Park and I visited many times with my free staff pass. It felt modern and cavernous. It was worth a visit. I used the shop on many occasions in the past. But now I am not sure I could persuade any of my friends that the place is worth the entry fee let alone visit the shop. The products seem overpriced and aimed mainly at tourists. That’s where the big money clearly is, but how about offering discounts to enthusiasts perhaps on production of a LOTS, LURS, or OS membership card?

Without a doubt the Museum staff worked very hard with its redesign, and I understand the reasons why. But if it’s not hitting home then the message is pointless. They do need to start listening to their visitors.

So if you do decide to try to interact with the Museum – try getting through to them. I had some problems booking the A stock tour tickets on the website – so we tried to call. You call the switch board during normal office hours, to get given another number which just rang and rang. Eventually I got the website to book my ticket, but having tried several times mistakenly forgot to change the “Tickets to collect at Ticket Office” to “tickets by post”. So the obvious question is where is this ticket office? Moorgate? Covent Garden? More phone calls – no answer. So I use the e-mail address on the ticket confirmation. The only one being “postmaster” on the bottom of the e-mail. Again no reply.

They have clearly not made it easy for the public/customers to interact with the Museum. They do not answer the relevant phone and you do not have a specific e-mail address to direct your questions too. Clearly as a customer I would like an e-mail to direct any questions to, as I needed to in this case. Eventually I used the general ‘contact us’ form and got a reply. In fairness I received a reply which confirmed my tickets would be posted once they were printed. And they did arrive in good time complete with a free admission ticket to LTM & the Acton event.

So perhaps now is the time to consider relocating to a better less cramped site. Somewhere which has the advantage to hold parallel events. I would support housing the whole museum on one site. The Royal Docks are ideal for this.

However if their target audience is the tourist, then that’s all we are going to get. Other than the occasional Acton open day of course. I doubt I will be going back to Covent Garden for another ten years!

Dean