From the 1880s until well into the 1950s, virtually all long-distance transportation of United States Mail was performed by the railroads. Specially equipped railway post office (RPO) cars were a part of most passenger trains, the cars staffed by highly trained railway postal clerks who sorted mail as the train sped along its route. The growth of this mail distribution network paralleled the expansion of the railroads, allowing mail to be exchanged between routes at junction points where two railroads crossed or shared passenger terminals.
Shortly before the First World War, the Post Office Department began assigning railway mail clerks to new transfer office positions which were established at many of the larger railroad junction points as well as passenger terminals in larger cities. These transfer clerks supervised mail exchanges between trains, served as the local liaison between the Railway Mail Service and the host railroad, and maintained detailed statistical records which were used to audit railroad charges for mail transportation and car usage. This latter task involved determining the amount of mail in baggage cars or storage mail cars, a unique process of estimating the car area occupied by mail sacks rather than counting individual sacks. Other duties included sorting letters which had been mailed at depot letter boxes and providing a hand-to-hand receipt for registered mail transferred between connecting railway post office routes. Many of the transfer offices had a unique postmark to cancel the mail which was sorted by the office, and these cancellations are still collected by philatelists and postal historians.
T.O. transfer office postal cancellation applied to mail sorted by the Memphis Central Station transfer office. Like many large cities, Memphis had two passenger terminals, and a similar transfer office was maintained at Memphis Union Station.
Transfer offices were used by RPO clerks as a point to read job bulletins (order books maintained by the Chief Clerk) before starting on a run, and as a location to finish paperwork at the end of a run. In 1951, almost 200 transfer offices were maintained across the country. Larger cities with multiple railroad stations often had several different transfer offices, one at each station. As mail transportation by rail declined in the 1950s, smaller transfer offices were closed. With the continued erosion of rail mail operations, and particularly after the demise of the railway post office network in the late 1960s, the need for transfer offices diminished and most were closed or merged with other positions by the early 1970s.
The Railway Mail Service of the United States Post Office Department was a significant mail transportation service in the US from the mid-19th century until the mid-20th century. The RMS, or its successor the Postal Transportation Service (PTS), carried the vast majority of letters and packages mailed in the United States from the 1890s until the 1960s.
Saint Paul Union Depot is a historic railroad station and intermodal transit hub in the Lowertown neighborhood of Saint Paul, Minnesota. It serves light rail, intercity rail, intercity bus, and local bus services.
The 20th Century Limited was an express passenger train on the New York Central Railroad (NYC) from 1902 to 1967. The train traveled between Grand Central Terminal in New York City and LaSalle Street Station in Chicago, Illinois, along the railroad's "Water Level Route".
A passenger railroad car or passenger car, also called a passenger carriage, passenger coach, or passenger bogie is a railroad car that is designed to carry passengers. The term passenger car can also be associated with a sleeping car, a baggage car, a dining car, railway post office and prisoner transport cars.
In Canada and the United States, a railway post office, commonly abbreviated as RPO, was a railroad car that was normally operated in passenger service and used specifically for staff to sort mail en route, in order to speed delivery. The RPO was staffed by highly trained Railway Mail Service postal clerks, and was off-limits to the passengers on the train.
The Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company was an American subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway, later of the Canadian National Railway operating in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Since a corporate restructuring in 1971, the railroad has been under CN's subsidiary holding company, the Grand Trunk Corporation. Grand Trunk Western's routes are part of CN's Michigan Division. Its primary mainline between Chicago and Port Huron, Michigan serves as a connection between railroad interchanges in Chicago and rail lines in eastern Canada and the Northeastern United States. The railroad's extensive trackage in Detroit and across southern Michigan has made it an essential link for the automotive industry as a hauler of parts and automobiles from manufacturing plants.
A Travelling Post Office (TPO) was a type of mail train used in Great Britain and Ireland where the post was sorted en route, used from 1830 to 1996, with non-TPO mail trains ending in 2024.
The Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes Railroad (SR&RL) was a 2 ft narrow gauge common carrier railroad that operated approximately 112 miles (180 km) of track in Franklin County, Maine. The former equipment from the SR&RL continues to operate in the present day on a revived, short segment of the railway in Phillips, Maine.
Rail transportation in the United States consists primarily of freight shipments along a well integrated network of standard gauge private freight railroads that also extend into Canada and Mexico. The United States has the largest rail transport network of any country in the world, about 160,000 miles (260,000 km).
The Federal Express was an overnight named passenger train run by the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad between Washington Union Station in Washington, D.C., and South Station in Boston, from 1912 to 1971. At different times, its route has taken it across the Hudson River via a car float between Port Morris and Jersey City, the Poughkeepsie Bridge, and finally the Pennsylvania Tunnel and Terminal Railroad. The final routing was identical to today's high-speed Northeast Corridor.
The Choctaw Rocket was a named passenger train operated by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad between Memphis, Tennessee, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, and Amarillo. Initially designated as train No. 51 (westbound) and train No. 52 (eastbound), it was the first diesel powered streamliner to operate out of Memphis, Tennessee, as well as the first streamliner service in the state of Arkansas.
The Railway Mail Service (RMS) Library is a major collection of materials pertaining to en route distribution history. Incorporated in May 2003, it can assist researchers interested in Railway Mail Service, route agent, Seapost, Railway Post Office (RPO), and Highway Post Office (HPO) history. The collection has many unique, original-source documents that provide answers to questions dealing with the transportation and distribution of USA Mail between 1862 and 1977, as well as other countries during the 19th century and 20th century.
An air mail facility is an installation for airmails of the United States.
Terminal railway post offices were sorting facilities which were established by the Railway Mail Service to speed the distribution of parcel post. These offices were usually located in or near railroad stations in major cities or junction points. Terminal railway post offices operated generally from 1913-1914 into the mid-1960s, before their function was absorbed by post office sectional centers.
The Postal Transportation Service (PTS) was the renamed successor to the Railway Mail Service of the United States Post Office Department from October 1, 1949. Although this branch of the service had been in charge of all transit mail, some parts had little to do with railroads, even though they were still the most important part of the service. In 1950, of the 32,000 clerks assigned to the PTS, only about 16,000 actually worked on trains. The remainder were in terminals, transfer offices, Air Mail Facility, Highway Post Offices (HPO), administrative offices, etc. Boat Railway Post Office, Streetcar Railway Post Offices, and the Seapost Service had already been discontinued. The name of the Chief Clerk's office was changed to District Superintendent's office.
Union Station, also known as Ogden Union Station, is a train station in Ogden, Utah, United States, at the west end of Historic 25th Street, just south of the Ogden Central Station. Formerly the junction of the Union Pacific(UP) and Central Pacific (CP) railroads, its name reflects the common appellation of train stations whose tracks and facilities are shared by railway companies.
The Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad was the first railroad to cross Missouri starting in Hannibal in the northeast and going to St. Joseph, Missouri, in the northwest. It is said to have carried the first letter to the Pony Express on April 3, 1860, from a train pulled behind the locomotive Missouri.
The Metropolitan Special was a passenger train of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) that operated from 1971. For most of its career, it ran between St. Louis, Missouri, and Jersey City, New Jersey.
The Washington–Chicago Express, an American named passenger train of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O), was one of four daily B&O trains operating between Washington, D.C., and Chicago, Illinois, via Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the 1930s–1960s. Other B&O trains of that period on the route were the Capitol Limited, Columbian, and the Shenandoah.
A catcher pouch is a mail bag that can be used in conjunction with a mail hook to "catch" mail awaiting pickup from a moving train. Catcher pouches were most often used by railway post offices in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Its use was limited to exchanges onto moving trains. The specially constructed catcher pouch was grabbed by the catcher mechanism in the passing railway car and the catcher pouch would release from the holding rings on the mail crane. This technique was known as "mail on the fly". Starting in the 1870s the use of this technique of the Railway Mail Service was an important issue in the United States. It was a popular technique and the backbone of the United States Postal Service through the 1930s.
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