The revamped London Transport Museum goes the distance

After standing outside on the Covent Garden cobblestones and waiting two years, fans of bus and train history can finally hop on board Thursday when the London Transport Museum is to reopen its doors.

The popular attraction, housed in a former Victorian flower market, has been revamped during its prolonged closure. More than $47 million was spent to spruce up its elderly vehicle collection, and swanky new galleries promise to illuminate the history and future of transit in the capital.

On my recent behind-the-scenes visit, several highlights were already emerging: an atmospheric re-creation of the darkened subways where thousands slept during World War II air raids; a tunnel section showing the gritty realities of Underground train construction hundreds of feet below street level from the Victorian age onward; and a Bakelite-infused 1930s living room that explores the surge in commuter travel between the world wars via archive film footage on its old TV set.

New installations aim to encourage debate on transportation alternatives: the World Cities gallery that showcases pioneering transit systems around the globe, and a Futures Gallery where visitors can make their own decisions about how giant metropolises such as London can meet increasing commuter demands.

But the backbone of the museum remains its unrivaled array of handsome heritage mass-transport vehicles. The renovated exhibition space -- displaying three times more buses, trains and taxis than its previous incarnation -- does a sterling job with its shiny, old-school collection.

The museum once was little more than a graveyard for dusty double-deckers, but the vehicles are now accompanied by etched-glass panels telling the stories of drivers and passengers, and wandering costumed characters promise to bring the rolling stock back to life with tales of what it was like to ride on bi-level horse carriages and smoky subterranean steam trains.

Visitors start their trip to London’s transit past on the newly added upper-mezzanine level. Alongside a velvet-lined sedan chair, the kind of conveyance that bustled across the Covent Garden piazza centuries ago, is a full-scale replica of the first London bus from 1824, a flower-painted horse-drawn carriage with pad-free wooden seats. The city was soon crammed with buses like this, carpeting the streets with manure, the vehicle-emission controversy of that day.

From here, visitors descend to a floor where the world’s first underground railway system is introduced. Some of the mothballed early Tube trains here include one that ran on smokeless fuel (the platforms were still shrouded in steam) and an upholstered, windowless train where guards in each carriage announced upcoming stations. Not for the claustrophobic, it was nicknamed the “padded cell.”

Back at ground level, the museum’s oft-photographed double-decker buses -- including the type of cherry-red Routemaster that was recently retired from the system -- are among its most popular vehicles. For visitors who want to see these in action, a new lecture theater promises a regular roster of transit-related archive films and presentations. Plans are also afoot for a 2008 transport-themed movie festival.

Visual appeal has always been a key part of London’s transit system, and the reopened museum promises a greater emphasis on the network’s history of art and design. The Underground system -- its network map alone is a design classic -- was an early arts patron, particularly during the first half of the last century when persuasive advertising campaigns lured Londoners out to the farthest reaches of the transit system for a day’s outing by train.

Elegant posters from this period depict idyllic leafy villages and smiling Londoners dropping in for a taste of rural paradise as though they were visiting another country. Many of these artworks dot the museum’s walls, but there’s also a dedicated gallery of 20 representative posters. A graphic-art exhibition is also in the cards for 2008.

Prints of some of these iconic posters are sold in the new museum shop, where visitors can also pick up kitschy Underground-map shot glasses or Mind the Gap underwear for that transport fan back home. There’s even pricey mod furniture upholstered with that bristly, carpet-like covering found in London’s trains and buses.

You can end your visit -- and raise a glass to the timely return of the museum -- at the adjoining Upper Deck cafe and bar, where the Metropolitan Mix cocktail is the highlight of the drinks menu. Just remember that there’s an Underground station nearby if you get a little too merry and don’t want to drive back to your hotel.