THE RM INTERVIEW
I WAS 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.
Building Acton depot
“The important thing about
