With plans to launch the London ’s new Night Tube on hold, this is an awkward time to open an exhibition on after-hours transport in the capital. We have a long way to go - a rumoured six months - before we can begin to compete with the City that Never Sleeps.

But in the meantime, we can look backwards, thanks to the London Transport Museum, at the history of late-night travel in the capital.

Anyone who has ever done shift work knows the joys of nocturnal London transport. It can be irregular, riotous, and at certain times, has a certain eau de pub that is irrepressible.

This exhibition Night Shift - London After Dark , which opens on September 11, charts the development of late-night public transport, examining how electricity liberated the city’s timetable, fostering a more elaborate nightlife, but also allowing for the city’s first shift workers.

Moving chronologically, viewers watch the nocturnal lives of Londoners evolve, through the Second World War and to the present day, with tantalising hints of what may be to come, whenever TfL and the unions decide to unleash the Night Tube.

Many of the gorgeous old posters serve as reminders that nothing is new: while late nights at the zoo may seem like a modern PR stunt, there’s a zoo lates poster from 1935, advising viewers to take the Tube home late at night after spending an evening with flamingos in Regents Park. A carefully preserved theatre bill from a similar era has a scribbled play-by-play of the writer’s evening movements (transport taken, impressions of the play) which is not unlike the self-centred minutiae that spews from today’s best Tweeters.

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A Star Trek inspired poster from 1984 Photo: London Transport Musem

Possibly most timeless is a print of carousers careening about London on a late-night bus, liberally imbibing and generally causing a ruckus. It’s nearly a hundred years old, but the scene closely resembles the general atmosphere on most night buses I’ve taken.

For a museum that is so (deservedly) popular with young children, it is a shame that there aren’t more interactive or multi-media aspects to this exhibition. Night Shift is a design exhibition that charts the history of the train at night through 2-D posters.

While I found a poster advertising how voters could use public transport to come to central London to hear the results of the latest general election over the radio fascinating, in the whole exhibition, my four-year-old was only really drawn to a pair of photographs of rat catchers, one holding a ferret, others toting their kill through a dark tunnel.

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Rat catchers near King's Cross, by Colin Tait, 1950 Photo: London Transport Museum

Next to that were photos of ‘fluffers’, (mostly) women who took to the tunnels at night to clean fluff from the tracks. How my daughter would have loved to have seen a video interview with one of these women. For a museum that focuses so well on interaction and experience elsewhere, I wish that this museum had paired an appreciation for art with more interactivity for its young visitors.

Still, if you have a penchant for design or have suffered the night shift - or the night bus - there is much for adults to enjoy. And you can take your children afterwards to climb through this superb museum’s old trains and buses or, for young children, to play on the excellent model bus and soft play area. And while you’re there, you can ponder whether all of this 24-hour transport has actually improved our lives and whether, come spring 2015, you’ll actually be hopping on the Tube at 3am.

Night Shift – London After Dark runs from September 11, 2015 to April 10, 2016, and is part of the London by Design season. Tickets fore general admission to the musem are £16 for adults, children are free.