Did any firm ever produce an operating version of a railroad post office car? If not, I am surprised no one ever did. Somewhere in the dim recesses of my memory I am thinking that American Flyer may have in S Scale. It seems it would have been simple enough to engineer with a track contact to trigger a normally open “hook” to grab the mail bag. After reading the impressive isue on RPO service in Classic Trains- I was thinking of adding an RPO run to my layout…
Flyer did indeed have one. In fact, it was shown on today’s episode of “I Love Toy Trains” on RFD. It was a great accessory, but I am a Lionel guy and have not seen one in 3 rail.
dennis
Both Hornby Dublo and Tri-ang did in the UK in 00. I had one around 1966 I think, it could be a hoot if you went too fast the mailbags could shoot a fair distance!
Hornby still do a travelling post office coach in OO. I had one till recently in LMS colours with a matching rake of coaches. It looks good pulled by a LMS Duchess class in crimson lake.
This was based on the real UK travelling post office coach. The GPO film “Night Mail” shows this in action with its collector gear.
I sold all my British OO to change to 3 rail O. And have no regrets. My son finds O alot easier to handle as Hornby are headed for more super detailed models. Great for adults but its sort of left the kids out of things.
Regards
Nick
The American Flyer mail car was the 718, produced from 1946-1954. It was available in red, green and maroon. I have the maroon version (which is quite hard to find) with it’s original mail bags and stand. This is a really fun car to operate and is always a hit with visitors to my layout. Of course, there’s a knack to hitting the button to activate is at just the right time. When it shoots the mail bag out, it always flies a good distance! American Flyer did produce an O gauge version of this car in the late prewar era when Gilbert had recently taken over and was making S scale trains that ran on O gauge track that were the precursor to their postwar S gauge line.
I’m also a collector of Tri-ang OO trains and have two Transcontinental (North American style) operating RPO’s, but, sadly, no mail bags or mechanism to operate them.
At York a few years ago (the last time Lionel displayed in the Red Hall) they had a B&O scale heavyweight with the Flyer mechanism mounted inside, apparently to see if anyone would be interested in it as a production item. Haven’t seen anything since, but I did build my own inside an aluminum combine. I flipped the mechanism to pick-up on the right-hand side of the car (a lot of careful bending - the swing arm had to have all it’s bends completely reversed - if you want to try it, heat the metal red hot with a torch to prevent the tabs from breaking off). The hardest part was fitting the sliding shoe into a 2500 series truck. I riveted half the 2500 bottom plate to the shoe half of a freight truck - I couldn’t solder it without melting the shoe. A real pain-in-the-a**, but worth it, even though it’s not as smooth as the original. I use the #214 mail swing arm accessory and a prewar UCS to operate it.
Actually the 3/16 Flyer car was made both during the pre and post war period. The 3/16 for 3 rail works just fine although it is a tad under scale for 1/4" to the foot.