I vaguely remember the large REAX platforms and buildings just southwest of Union Station in Chicago and my earlist memories of steam were the holiday mail and express trains on the Q pulled by Hudsons and Northerns.
So who was REA and what did they haul? Were they like the FedEx of today? Could anyone ship something REA or did they haul primarily commercial paper, etc? Where and what was the terminal like in NYC?
Any good books or old Trains articles on the operation?
Here’s an article on this site http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/003/132swiza.asp
Enjoy
Paul
Vic Roseman wrote a great paper-back on REA for Rocky Mountain Publishing, Inc. in Denver, CO, entitled “Railway Express An Overview” in 1992 - ISBN is 0-9612692-5-1. I’m guessing that you can find a copy on a used book site such abe.com or amazon. The book is well illustrated with a lot of pen and ink drawings by Roseman (a very talented model railroader from NYC).
REA was jointly owned by the railroads and carried just about any less than carload shipment. REA had a fleet of baggage cars, trucks for local pick-up and delivery, and even contracts with airlines for fast shipments.
There were a number of facilities in NYC including a handling facility next door to Grand Central Terminal, a huge facility in the PRR’s Sunnyside Yard in Queens and a facility out in Jersey City that handled express shipments that arrived there from the CNJ, B&O and Reading.
I have the book and would be glad to scan any of the diagrams for you - Roseman has diagrams for most of the major stations and yards as well as pictures of the delivery trucks.
REA’s greatest competition seemed to come from the US Post Office’s Parcel Post Service.
Hope this helps,
Mike
When I worked as a show horse groom in the early 1960’s the stable owned a private horse car from Southern Pacific. While the car was property of the stable owner, transportation arrangements were made through the Railway Express Agency. In the case of horse transportation, one attendant was allowed free for every door of the car, the car had six doors, hence six free passes, other payed full fare. In the earliest years the tack, gear, carts, sulkies, buggies and trunks would be off loaded on to REA trucks, with the horses going by commercial horse transport to the fairgrounds. REA also operated their own horse cars, but these were a far cry from the one I rode in. The stable owner was a stockholder in SP with considerable influence, which meant the rail car was specially prepared each year for the trip. Even so, everything related to its movement over the rails had to go through REA. After about 1968-69 the railroads couldn’t handle the horse car, REA was gone, Monon was gone, L&N was in trouble and we were relegated to trucking the stable between California and Kentucky.
Railway Express, REA, was much like today’s Fed-EX, or Railway Express competitor, United Parcel Service. In my childhood in Los Angeles, it was very common to see the Railway Express on the streets and in neighborhoods. My Grandfather worked for the Pacific Electric Railway in freight rates and claims. I can still recall PE freight motors with Railway Express lettering on the sides.
Railway Express, later REA express ran into trouble when the likes of UPS and Federal Express were able to undercut REA’s rates, which were fixed by the ICC. Their competitors could and did take advantage of their rate making freedom and that was that for REA. It could have challenged the ICC, but they would have won a pyrrhic victory too late to save REA from going under, since such cases tended to drag on for up to ten years.
The small town railroad agent really liked the Railway Express Agency, at least I did. You received a 10 percent commission on the transaction whether it was incoming, outgoing, prepaid, or paid locally.
We had a 10 percent commision on Western Union telegrams, too, but ONLY on the money collected. As most telegrams were received prepaid, and most of the originating ones were sent collect very little cash was received on-site but the work still had to be done.
Art
A really good first person account of working for REA is “Ten Turtles to Tucumcari” by Garrett Klink. The author worked for REA for many years and he was there to witness its decline and fall.
Actually what did the REA in was the decline in passenger train service. REA cars were carried on the head end of all but the crack name passenger trains. This enabled them to serve all the cities and virtually every hamlet in the USA with fast, frequent (at least daily) service. In the cities their fleet of trucks picked up and delivered shipments while in the smaller towns the local railroad station was the pick up and drop off point. As passenger trains were dropped wholesale beginning in the 1950’s the REA lost its ability to serve many customers and UPS, which previously had been pretty much limited to intra-city package service in the larger cities, expanded to fill in the gap. I’m not sure when the REA went out of business but know it was alive until the mid 1960’s.
I can’t recall the details but REA also tried to get into the air express business before they went out of business.
Air Express was an REA subsidiary that was a co-operative effort between REA and the scheduled airlines. I can remember their magazine ads in the early to mid 1960’s that bragged that only the US Mail went on the plane before Air Express.
REA was also done in by the fact that it was restricted to using the railroads for its service except on certain routes.
And the driver’s strike didn’t help much at all. Much like the final nail in the coffin.
REA was still on the streets in 1968 and they filed for bankruptcy in 1975. I was a UPS driver at the time and remember seeing their trucks and drivers around the city. Years later I had the oppurtunity to work with a guy who had worked at REA. He felt that was the best job he ever had. Now we both are retired.