Mail by Rail - The Story of the Post Office and the Railways

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Going underground to avoid the jam". Rail. No.334. EMAP Apex Publications. 1–14 July 1998. pp.36–41. ISSN 0953-4563. OCLC 49953699.

And yet, even without the TPO, mail traffic is still being carried up and down Britain’s rail network today. After a hiatus, some mail and parcels traffic has now returned to rail - carried in bulk and not sorted en-route. By 1914, there were 126 TPO carriages in operation throughout the United Kingdom. [1] They were only referred to as TPOs for the first time in 1928, prior to this, the common term for mail carriages had been Railway Post Offices (RPOs). [7]

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Changing circumstances brought an end to both the travelling post offices and the underground railway but mail is still carried, in bulk, by train and a part of the railway has found a new life as the Mail Rail tourist attraction.

Well, the doorman had a call in at each pouch as they came in. Well he cut it short. In other words, he would say something like, "Florida dies with a two from chic seven." The book comprises several sections, all beautifully illustrated with photos, diagrams and etchings from old newspapers: I mean, when do you ever get to whizz around London in a train so small you can’t scratch your armpits? (Ok, noted this is probably a daily occurrence for some commuters).According to industry periodical Rail Magazine, the first Travelling Post Office (TPO) carriage emerged during 1838, and credited George Kastadt, a surveyor employed by the GPO, with the concept. [1] On 6 January 1838, Kastadt proposed a trial of a ‘travelling office’, of which the first run was conducted just weeks later. The advantage of this innovation was that time could be saved by sorting mail while it was being transported, rather than separately sorting it either beforehand or afterwards and thus taking more time to do so. [1] This initial TPO was a converted horse box and was initially operated on the Grand Junction Railway. [3] Karstadt's son was one of two mail clerks who did the sorting. [4]

By the end of 1993, RM had signed a 13-year deal with RES (a three-year interim contract, with a ten-year agreement once the ‘hub’ was complete) to run the trains from its new ‘hub’. It was known as the London Distribution Centre (LDC, now better-known as the Princess Royal Distribution Centre), and was built at Stonebridge Park, near Wembley. A restored RPO car is displayed as part of the Pioneer Zephyr at the Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. There's absolutely no question that Amtrak could handle it. Seriously, how hard is it to load a baggage car?

Johnson admits in the Introduction to the new book that a lot of the material has been seen in his previous books. I haven’t read his 1995 book, also called Mail by Rail, but I do have a copy of his 2009 An Illustrated History of the Travelling Post Offices. The first noticeable difference between this latest book and the 2009 one is that the new book benefits significantly from the availability of old newspapers via the British Newspaper Archive. Johnson now cites many newspapers to illustrate his points. Although we ship via the fastest and efficient couriers, in busy periods it can sometimes mean delivery times will vary, please be patient we will not let you down.

Effective August 15, 1955, the fifteen divisions of the Postal Transportation Service were eliminated and the mail routes divided among the same Postal Regions into which Post Offices were classified. On May 10, 2019, the U.S. Postal Service will commemorate the 150 th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad with a set of Forever stamps. Construction of this railroad during the 1860s was the wonder of the age. Its completion was marked by the “Golden Spike Ceremony,” held when rail lines built by the Central Pacific Railroad Company from the west and the Union Pacific Railroad Company from the east were joined at Promontory Summit, Utah. White, James E. A Life Span and Reminiscences of Railway Mail Service (Deemer & Jaisohn, 1910) online. Gandy, S. Kay, and Cynthia Williams Resor. "Changing technology and the US mail." The Social Studies 103.6 (2012): 226-232. onlineThe early TPOs were very basic, in terms of facilities for staff onboard. Space for sorting mail was at a premium, and staff welfare was more of an afterthought, to the extent that toilets were not even provided. This was until a postal worker was killed while relieving himself at the rear of a sorting carriage, and it was recommended that the situation be rectified! Fifteenth Division: Pennsylvania, Delaware, also lines of Pennsylvania Railroad west of Pittsburgh. Headquarters: Pittsburgh. White, John H. (1978). The American Railroad Passenger Car. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. p.473. ISBN 0801819652. OCLC 2798188. London Assembly's Public Services Committee. "The future of Mail Rail" (PDF). Greater London Assembly. Tunell, George G. "The Charge for Railway Mail Carriage." Journal of Political Economy 7.2 (1899): 145-160. online