Althougt this is news on parcel service TGV, I decided to put the topic here as all the other ~650 TGVs carry passengers. Even these are trains designed for passengers (though built without large windowsn and seats, etc.), but units have all these years carriers parcels in their trailers…
Facing declining mail amounts French Postal services La Poste has finally bent to a difficult decision: they have stopped running the 2-3 daily/nightly TGV routes from Paris to cities south of it. Five half units employed (according my statistics there is supposed to be one whole unit too) have been withdrawn and along other TGV-PSEs they are in the immediate danger to be cut to pieces. La Poste tells they had no other alternative as mail amounts transported declined by 50% from 2007 to today, and some of the schedules were only occupied by 15%. This made transporting mail on TGV unprofitable.
In 2012 La Poste tried to make other parcel companies interested in TGV usage and showed TGV-LaPoste for example in London. Results were not encouraging as no other company decided to take part using the units.
For the future La Poste will use intermodal containers (which they call swap bodies) on flat cars on rail transportation, much slower, but profitable way of delivering mail.
I’m hoping La Poste would reserve one power car and one or two of the trailers in their museum, so future generations would see an interesting era when everything put on high speed rail seemed possible.
