Bookshop in abandoned London Underground station

'We lived in an abandoned London Underground station as hippies in 1960s - and I'm still here 55 years later' (My London)

Way down in the depths of Hounslow just a few miles from hectic Heathrow, there's an oasis of greenery in the National Trust's Osterley Park. Then, on a quiet unassuming street right near the park is a building that looks like a charming old chapel. But believe it or not, it's actually a disused London Underground station called Osterley Park & Spring Grove that's been here for a stonking 150 years. It's now a little secondhand bookshop that's like an Aladdin's cave of treasures. The shelves are packed with a treasure trove of books going back decades and crammed in between are racks of unusual postcards and curious items that just demand to be investigated...

I've been to that bookshop many years ago (albeit not during it's hippy period!) and I had forgotten about it. Nice to know that it still exists. When you go through on a Piccadilly Line train you can still see the abandoned platforms.

>1 John5918: You're famous! Bookstore Tourism is on the case.

And a friend has just drawn my attention to another bookshop in a disused railway station, this one at Alnwick in Northumberland, England - Barter Books

The shop has many extra features: open fires in the Winter, beloved by all. The Station Buffet with good plain food, coffee, tea and cookies. Plus Paradise, the new ice cream parlour. A model railway acting as a link between the book columns of the central room, along with poetry lines...

Interestingly this is the bookshop where they found an original copy of the "Keep calm and carry on" World War II propaganda poster which was never officially issued and was lost for half a century.

>3 John5918: I was a bit disappointed by Barter Books when I went there a few years ago: the café was nice, if rather overcrowded (it was a wet day), but the selection of books on offer seemed very bland. I think they get so many people through that they have to be quite ruthless about only using their shelving for stuff that will move quickly. And the LGB trains running round the tops of the shelves are just a gimmick, really.

But Alnwick is a nice place to visit, if you don’t mind putting money in the pockets of dukes.

I’m sure there must be a few more former-station bookshops. One I’ve been to a few times is in Wells-Next-The-Sea. (With the bonus of an Orthodox church in a former station a few miles away in Walsingham...) But there must be others.

Robert Humm's railway bookshop in Stamford (UK) used to be in the railway station, but he left a few years ago when lease renewal negotiations failed. He secured premises a short distance away.

And still in the UK, there's Bill Hudson's bookshop in the station building at Matlock, in Derbyshire,

>5 RobertDay:

Sadly Robert Humm's bookshop has just closed. There's a big article about it in this month's Railway Magazine (January 2026, No 1,498, Vol 172, pp 32-35). It includes some interesting observations on how and why the railway book scene has changed.

>6 John5918: Yes, I saw that. I visited once and always had it on the list to make a return trip, but never got around to it.

His analysis of the state of the railway book trade is sadly accurate.

>6 John5918: >7 RobertDay: and others. I bought a copy Railway Magazine (Thank you Dr. Google and assistant, Gemini) as I wanted to read the article. One could take the article and probably tell an AI product to change all railroad references to some other series and see the loss of book dealers. I have known dealers in other special areas that sound like they fit Robert Humm to a T! This loss of dealers in special areas is painful in the USA as well as the UK.

The information below is a bit of fluff so feel free to ignore it.

We traveled out west and found wonderful shops in Colorado, Montana, Washington State, Oregon and Victoria British Columbia. I always found "goodies" for my five or six special aeas (WPA, American Guide Series, Colorado Travels, Colorado Narrow Guage, Trolleys, Interurbans, Charlie Russell, etc)

I became gainfully unemployed (aka asked to retire after 35 years in big Pharma) in 1984. My wife and I started heading to Florida in January; Mary Ann visited orchid nurseries and two big orchid shows and I went to book stores. There was at least one in every good size city. By the time we returned, the luggage was strapped to the roof, my book purchases were stacked in the rear seat foot space, and the rest of the car was filled with orchids from all over the place. If I ran out of space, there was always book rate at the post office although it is now called media mail and the rates have become obscene.

Our last driving trip to Florida was either 1995 or 1996. We were on the road for two weeks in 1984 visiting 15 stores and another 10 I never got to. By the end there were only 3 or 4 left. One was in Jacksonville, one in Orlando, none in Tampa, 2 in St. Petersburg, and one in Fort Lauderdale. The Fort Lauderdale one was in big old grocery store and I saw the remains of the rest (recognized how they priced them).

The number of knowledgeable dealers is getting less and less. I do some hunting on the internet but I love to touch, feel and really see what is inside. Philadelphia used to have 15 or 20 good dealers. Now it's down to 3 or 4. There were about 8 or 9 of us that did our "Christmas Book Hunt" but now there are only 3 of us and one cannot walk well. . .

I do miss the auctions but I saw the writing on the wall. A box of CERA annuals used to go for $1500 in the 1980's. The last batch I bought at auction (same number all different titles) went for $150 in the late 90's. Oh how I hate the internet a lot of the time. I'm called the electronic Luddite as I only send emails and the only group I belong to is LT.

Enough: past my bedtime.

PS: one of my favorite sayings from Mark Twain. "In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them."

>8 ulmannc: I may have recommended these two books to you in the past but I can't find any post where I did so. Per your interest in Colorado Narrow Gauge - Little Engines and Big Men and Rio Grande Glory Days are first person accounts of working on the narrow gauge railroads which you may find interesting. It should be noted that Lathrop writes well.

>9 alco261: Guess what? I have them both and never read them. I just marched them in from the library. Rio Grand Glory Days arrived in 1997 and Little Engines and Big Men came in around 2018. They just went to the top of the "to be read" pile. Thanks for the suggestions.

>9 alco261: I just finished reading Little Engines and Big Men. I enjoyed it no end. I know enough of the geography of the narrow gauge territory in Colorado as my wife loves alpine plants. Alpine plants and narrow gauge are in similar areas so I chuckle as I read the book and sometimes remember what plant I saw there. If I ask my wife, she tells me 10 plants she saw there. You now know who is the plant person in our family.

An aside: we rode the Cumbres and Toltec a number of years ago. We started at the Chama end as I was hoping we would have enough coaches so they would have to double head it. Alas, we didn't have enough cars but it was lots of fun. C and T has a nice horseshoe curve!

Mr. Lathrop is an excellent writer. I love the last part of the last paragraph in the chapter, Big Little Engines: "I remember the first shotgun engine I ever fired, way back in the past. I'd put in a fire, then sit on my window sill with the upper half of my body outside, listening to that little locomotive bark to the stars."

>11 ulmannc: I'm glad you enjoyed the book - it is one of my favorites. As for visiting the C&T - yup did that with a Trains magazine excursion back in 2018 - the train stopped everywhere along the line so people could form a photo line and take pictures of runbys etc. We also got to walk around taking pictures in the yard.