Travelling Post Office

A Travelling Post Office (TPO) is a type of mail train where the post is sorted en-route.

History

Following an agreement in 1830, made between the General Post Office and the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR), mail had been carried by train in Great Britain, between Liverpool and Manchester, via the L&MR.Simmons-Biddle Pp 303-304.] The passing of the Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act 1838 required railway companies to carry mail, by ordinary or special trains, as required by the Post Master General; however this act did not set the charges for such services.

Mail was first sorted on a moving train in a converted horse-box on the Grand Junction Railway, England, in January 1838, [cite book| author=White, John H., Jr.| title=The American Railroad Passenger Car| publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press| location=Baltimore and London| year=1978| id=ISBN 0-8018-1965-2| pages=p 473 ] at the suggestion of Frederick Karstadt, a General Post Office surveyor. Karstadt's son was one of two mail clerks who did the sorting. [cite book| author=Johnson, Peter.| title=The British Travelling Post Office| publisher=Ian Allan Publishing| location=Surrey| year=1985| id=ISBN 0-711-01459-0| pages=p 13 ] In 1845 the service was extended via Derby to Newcastle upon Tyne by the Midland Railway; and soon after reached Scotland. [Billson, P., (1996) "Derby and the Midland Railway" Derby: Breedon Books]

The first special postal train was operated by the Great Western Railway between London and Bristol. The inaugural train ran on 1 February 1855, leaving Paddington station at 20:46, and arriving at Bristol at 00:30. In 1866, apparatus for picking up and setting down mailbags without stopping was installed at Slough and Maidenhead.

After the privatisation of British Rail in the mid 1990s, British TPOs were operated most recently by Rail Express Systems, and their successor EWS. On 9 January 2004 Royal Mail decided to suspend transporting mail by rail. However, Royal Mail reversed this decision over the Christmas season that year; and began operating some TPO trains with EWS's competitor FirstGBRf, then known as GB Railfreight.

TPOs were equipped with letter boxes so that mail could be posted whilst the train stood at a station. The post-marks from TPOs are valued by philatelists.

TPOs were employed in many British Commonwealth countries ["The Travelling Post Offices of Victoria: 1865 - 1912" Poole, L.G. Australian Railway Historical Society Bulletin, June, 1969 pp127-139] . The Army Post Office had its own TPOs.

TPO vehicles

TPOs are formed of several different types of vehicle:

*Post Office Sorting Van
*Post Office Stowage Van
*Brake Post Office Stowage Van
*Courier Vehicle
*Propelling Control Vehicle
*Brake Guard
*General Utility Van

See also

* Great Central Steam Railway - where the Travelling Post Office and Mail Exchange on the Move is recreated
* Great Train Robbery (1963) in which £2.3 million was stolen from a Glasgow to London TPO train
* Night Mail - Film and Poem about Travelling Post Office
* Railways (Conveyance of Mails) Act 1838
* Railway post office - The term for cars in North American use that served similar functions.

References

External links

* [http://www.tpo.org.uk The Travelling Post Office]
* [http://www.postalheritage.org.uk/history/downloads/BPMA_Info_Sheet_TravellingPostOffice_web.pdf The British Postal Museum & Archive - Victorian Travelling Post Office.]
* [http://www.capepostalhistory.com/TPO-Western.html Travelling Post Office of the Cape of Good Hope]