You wouldn’t think that West Ham Bus Garage had anything in common with Harry Potter, but TfL’s Lost Property Office there might be the closest thing to the Room of Requirement on this mortal coil. “Office” is a bit of a misnomer — it’s really a cavernous warehouse full of row upon row of all the possessions misplaced by Londoners on the TfL network — 6,500 a week, to be precise. It’s a nosey parker’s paradise.
Every day, all the items that have been left on buses, tubes, trains and black cabs arrive here in sacks, which are unpacked and labelled in the sorting room. “We try and treat everything the same,” says lost property performance manager Diana Quaye, who is showing me around. This egalitarianism is clear when I see a staff member diligently labelling a snapped electric cable. “It could be valuable to that person,” Quaye shrugs.
