Travelling Post Office

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British Rail TPO vehicle NSA 80390 on display at Doncaster Works open day on 27 July 2003. This type of vehicle, based on the British Rail Mark 1 coach, was the final design on TPO vehicle used in the United Kingdom.

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

Mail was first sorted on a moving train in a a converted horse-box on the Grand Junction Railway, England, in January 1838,^[1] at the suggestion of Frederick Karstadt, a Post Office surveyor. Karstadt's son was one of two mail clerks who did the sorting.^[2]

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 competitor 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 Colonies. The Army Post Office had its own TPOs.

TPOs are formed of several different types of vehicle:

[edit] See also

Railway post office - The term for cars in North American use that served similar functions.
Night Mail - Film and Poem about Travelling Post Office
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

[edit] References

^ White, John H., Jr. (1978). The American Railroad Passenger Car. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, p 473. ISBN 0-8018-1965-2.
^ Johnson, Peter. (1985). The British Travelling Post Office. Surrey: Ian Allan Publishing, p 13. ISBN 0-711-01459-0.