Westminster Cathedral's Visit to Acton Depot

On Friday our class went on a trip to the London Transport Museum Depot. When we arrived at the museum we met up with historian Peter Daniels who gave us an introduction to the project. Our school got to go in the old cabs first. Then we were split into groups of three. We were the luckiest group because we got to go in the new 2013 Mercedes model. It was the most snug car in the world, we got into the drivers seat and learnt how it is to be a real cab driver. After all our fun exploring we got to have a ride in it around the area and it was quite funny because when we were coming back the driver nearly hit a women over and he said that’s 5 bonus points but we thought it was 5 points on your licence. After that we went in the oldest cab there on the day, it was from 1955, I was quite scared, no seat belts, probably a dodgy engine but it was good.

About 45 minutes later we got to go and interview some cabbies that have been driving black cabs for over 25 years. First we interviewed Alf Townsend, he was a Journalist, an author and a professional footballer before he became a cabbie, he played for Leyton Orient but quit to join the RAF. Then we spoke to Danny Freeman, he had been driving a cab for 25 years. A cool fact is he drove from London to Madrid to raise money for a diabetes charity as that’s what his brother died of. It took him 2 years to do the knowledge.

Anyway after that we had some lunch then we started to learn about the history of the black cabs here is a list of some of them:
Handsome cab
The Growler
The Umming Bird
TX1
FX4
And now modern day cabs.

After lunch year 6 went back to the main room, and played a game named Who Wants to be a Black Cab Millionaire? In the quiz we learnt a lot of facts about the history of black cabs, such as where the name cab comes from…it actually comes from the word cabriolet which is a type of fancy word for cab. And the name hackney cab came from the brown haquenee horse.

My group won, thanks to Caden's amazing singing skills which topped the vote of the teachers to win the tie break. We then left the museum after a amazing day!