Mark Pierce wrote: “Headend traffic [on SP’s Sunset Limited”] increased with the end of the mail/express train Argonaut in 1958."
You bet it did. In the early 1960s the Sunset often ran in and out of New Orleans with 20 or more cars, including a substantial number of nominal baggage cars carrying mail and express. These trains had to use New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal’s longest platform tracks, 11 and 12.
So long,
Andy
In Vancouver the trains carrying mail would use a long passenger platform at the CP station down at the water front. The mail was dumped down a shoot into a tunnel under the station and would go by a conveyor belt for about 2 kilometers up to the main Vancouver post office. I have been in the tunnel a few times as it is still there, and is used a lot for filming movies. It must have been lousy duty for postal workers who patrolled the conveyor system as it was a dark, dingy place to be. I think the Post Office stopped using it in the late sixties as airmail took over. But the cost to implement such an operation with this long tunnel solely for the movement of mail speaks volumes as to the amounts of mail the railroads once moved.
Brent