AS custodian of London’s transport heritage, the London Transport Museum (LTM) has a huge responsibility. It displays and stores its conserved exhibits in two exhibition sites.
The flagship is the 1872 Grade II listed former Victorian Flower Market in Covent Garden, which opened its doors to the public for the first time in March 1980, formally opened by HRH Princess Anne. Since then, the collection has been rearranged twice, most recently undergoing a £22 million refit between 2005 and 2007.
One of two surviving former G-Stock Driving Motor (DM) cars, No. 4248, can be found on the ‘Raised Table’, built in 1993 during the first refit, mounted alongside Metropolitan Railway locomotive No.5 John Hampden, Class 4-4-0T steam locomotive No.23, built in 1866, and Chesham coach 400. All exhibits are maintained in carefully controlled humidity and lighting conditions, to prevent deterioration.
Meanwhile, the other surviving G-Stock DM car, No.4184, is stored at the LTM’s Acton Depot site at Acton in Zone 3. Instead of being on display, the car is rarely seen by the public. Located externally, to the rear of the depot building, having been covered with tarpaulin for some years, the car is no longer part of the Q-Stock restoration project. At face value, the juxtaposition of where both cars now find themselves, could not be starker.
THE G-STOCK STORY
In 1920, 100 new steel bodied F-Stock cars were constructed by the Metropolitan Carriage, Wagon and Finance Company for the
