That is what I seem to remember as well. It took a long time for AMTRAK to decide what to keep, and what was worth repainting. Clearly an RPO would have been at the bottom of both lists…
Sheldon
Mike wrote: “I remember seeing a mail train on Amtrak’s NEC in Connecticut in 1989. I don’t remember if it had RPO, or was just mail storage cars. It lasted into the millenium.”
I used to run them. No RPO’s by the time I was around. Just material handling cars and baggage cars.
Mail 12/13, and Mail 10 were Shoreline trains. There was another, 641, that left Boston 2.30am, ran over the B&A to Springfield (where the mail got worked), then made passenger stops down the Hartford Line and on to NYC/DC. It usually had 4 or 5 mail cars on the head end, and about 6 coaches behind. You went up on #178 (last Shoreline train to Boston in the evening), got a few hours’ rest, then came back on 641 – you’d be tired when that run was done!
Given how long they’ve been gone, might not hurt to add some info re RPOs. Railway Post Office cars were just that - a US Post Office on rails. Only the US postal clerks sorting mail in the car were allowed in the car, even though the car was owned by the railroad fulfilling the mail contract. An RPO would only be used on routes that had enough mail that mail had to be sorted en route in the moving train. This is different from a locked car carrying sacked / sorted mail to a destination.
BTW the postal clerks all carried sidearms. My dad’s first post office job in 1943 was working as a mail handler, moving mail between the main post office in downtown Minneapolis and the nearby Great Northern and Milwaukee Road stations. He also had to carry a sidearm when doing that.
Does this consist infromation apply to any passenger train in the transition era?
June 30, 1977:
RPO_NY-Wash, 1977 by Edmund, on Flickr
RPO_2016_0016_fix (2016_08_17 08_08_12 UTC) by Edmund, on Flickr
Good Luck, Ed
Generally I’d say yes. But remember things weren’t really universal. A baggage-RPO-passenger combine on a branchline train wasn’t the same as a mainline train with 20 cars of only mail and express.
BTW although RPO service ended finally in 1977 as noted, probably 99% of RPO routes ended in the mid-sixties. My father worked for the Post Office/USPS from 1943-74 (except for a ‘break’ to serve in the Army 1944-46) as a Letter Carrier. Part of the reason he never was promoted to a supervisor was the ending of the RPO routes in the sixties. The RPO clerks were at such a high pay rate that they had to be transferred to jobs as supervisors - often at local post offices, and despite their never having worked in anything other than RPO work.
Did Canadian roads have similar rules and carry RPO’s also?
Most of what we have discussed are UNITED STATES postal rules, were there significantly different rules north of the border?
They definitely operated RPO cars in many areas and sealed mail-storage baggage cars between major cities.
Long before my time, but RPOs I’ve seen in RR museums had the mail-sorting room take up the one end of the car so there was no physical passage to any other car coupled at that end, and the door at the other end had a heavy locking/bolting mechanism.
Non-postal employees wouldn’t have been able to physically get in.
The thing one poster mentioned about carrying sidearms I don’t know about.
Yes, the postal clerks were armed. I don’t know if all the clerks were bit at least there were designated ones that were armed.
See above at 2:15
Regards, Ed
I saw a picture of an RPO that had a rack of shotguns on the wall. Yes they were armed, and very well. The rack was in between two sorting desks. Five pump action shotguns would keep the mail thieves away. I think it was taken in the thirties or early forties. It may be on Shorpy, I don’t remember where but it struck me and I recall the picture clearly.
Pete.
All RPO clerks were required to carry their USPS issued .38 while on duty. And some RPO cars did have additional weapons as well. It is the textbook example of deterrance, as there are no commonly known reports of a RPO clerk having to discharge his weapon or any accounts of RPO robbery attempts.
The facts surrounding the carrying of firearms by RPO clerks is documented in a USPS publicity film made I believe in the 50’s.
Being an RPO clerk was a higher paying prestigious job in the post office which carried extra responsibility.
Sheldon
Crowded Apartment!
RPO_Apartment by Edmund, on Flickr
Apparently, the clerks were permitted to hang up their holsters?
RPO_Apartment-2 by Edmund, on Flickr
— and, hey! Who’s hiding donuts up here?
RPO_Apartment-2-crop by Edmund, on Flickr
Cheers, Ed
My father’s first job with the post office was as a Mail Handler in the main post office in downtown Minneapolis. He went to the nearby Great Northern and Milwaukee Road depots to deliver and collect mail from the mail trains. He was required to be armed, like the RPO clerks were. There was an armory in the basement of the post office with an employee who was in charge of issuing and maintaining the weapons.
I wonder if the policy of arming postal clerks goes back to the days of Butch and Sundance. I’m not aware of train robberies being much of an issue for most of the 20th century but maybe that’s my ignorance. Organized crime found trucks to be easier pickings.
Actually, if you do some research, you find out there were not all that many train robberies in the 19th Century.
The amount of crime in the old west is greatly exaggerated by Hollywood and folk lore.
In fact, that is why Billy the Kid, the gun fight at the OK coral, the James Gang, were all such a big deal - that level of lawlessness was rare.
But, firearms are a proven deterrent, they save hundreds, if not thousands, of lives every day without leaving their holsters, reminding wouldbe criminals that someone will fight back. And as such, they are an equalizer, reminding those who would use their size or strength to intimidate, that one need not be big and strong to protect one’s self and family.
A message that clearly worked for the Post Office.
Sheldon
I agree completely but because this has the risk of developing into a political discussion, I’ll leave it at that.
I don’t know who was the original source for this but as the saying goes, “You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.”. The movie The Untouchables attributed it to Al Capone, but I don’t think that was his line. I did some googling and the best evidence is it came from comedian Professor Irwin Corey who first suggested it came from Hamlet which of cours