Video of TfL's Lost Property Office from BBC2's The Tube

If you missed the 2nd episode of The Tube, BBC2's highly popular documentary on London Underground staff, here's a chance to see the section on the Lost Property Office (LPO).


The Tube is a six part series airing each Monday at 9pm, which takes a behind the scenes look at the day-to-day running of the Underground. London Underground's Lost Property team of 40 staff catalogue the vast array of items left on the Tube, some 200,000 items.  Every day over 1,000 people leave something behind on the Tube.  The most popular losses are mobile phones (with many still left on). The video shows how the staff's painstaking work reunites customers with their treasures. Each day 300 people get items back.  But as you'll see in the video people also claim back weirder things like broken crack pipes, samaurai swords, gimp masks and worn underwear.


London Transport Museum's Community Curator, Jen Kavanagh, also got a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes at the TfL's Lost Property Office.

She said "When we went down the store room was packed with items, all clearly labelled and neatly arranged in numbered zones. The staff work very efficiently – we watched as a call came in from the customer point upstairs, requesting an object be sent up for return. It took the staff less than a minute to locate the object and send it up in the goods lift, making for happy customers.

The LPO store also houses some more bizarre objects which have never been re-claimed, including false teeth, a grandfather clock, a stuffed fox and some prosthetic limbs. There were also single shoes, crutches and walking sticks, which make you wonder how the owners didn’t notice they had left such objects behind!"

Geoff Marshall also made a film for London Transport Museum about what goes on behind the scenes, which will features many weird and wonderful stories about what is lost and found on London's transport.


More on their blog.

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