Secret tunnels, a lost airport and TV’s original dummy

Did you know that Croydon used to attract Hollywood stars? Or that grotesque sculptures once welcomed patients to Bedlam? Such things you’ll learn visiting the capital’s more bijou exhibitions

The V&A? The Science Museum? I’m sure, during childhood visits to the capital, that my parents must have shown me some of London’s biggest attractions, but the memory that’s really stayed with me is of something much smaller. We had called in at a Georgian townhouse late one dusky afternoon – and once inside were invited to climb up on to the roof. There, as evening fell over the skyline, I found a scaled-down railway station with a miniature train, steam pouring from its chimney, that skated over a pond and occasionally plunged into a tunnel. It was the stuff of Mary Poppins. Anything is possible in London, I thought.

That rooftop train ride helped ignite my fascination with the capital and its cornucopia of museums. The London Toy and Model Museum, as I later found out it was called, was only open from 1982 to 1999. And yet it was the start of a journey that wound up with me writing for Londonist, a website that enlightens people on the best – and often more unexpected – things they can get up to in this city.