Britain's second-busiest station, and the one people meet under. The clock that hangs from the roof rather than a tower, the war memorial most passengers walk straight past, the funeral railway Waterloo pushed out, and the best hour of the day to stand still in it.

There is a building next to Acton Town station, behind a wall you have probably walked past without a second glance, that holds more than 320,000 objects from 160 years of London transport history. Most people who live in London have never heard of it. That is the point of this post. The Museum Depot is the working store of the London Transport Museum. The Covent Garden building gets the visitors; Acton gets everything that will not fit: full-size train carriages, horse-drawn