I have a set of Rivarossi shorty passenger cars which I have relegated to my branchline which has tighter radii than my mainline. One of the cars in the set is an RPO. It is my understanding that the purpose of an RPO is to allow Post Office personnel to sort mail in route. Would it make any sense to have such a car on a branchline train? Conceptually, this branchline is about 40 miles long and serves two towns. Would there be enough volume justify an RPO?
My dad worked on RPO cars in the 40s and 50s on and off. I have heard a lot of stories of his trips. Especially heading north out of Winnipeg. I am just speculating here but I would say there may have well been postal ops on a short line. However instead of a postal employee going along for a short trip for only two towns, it would have been contracted to the railroad to handle the mail including sorting between the two towns as long as they were not large towns, and they had a small volume of mail. The post offices in the towns would have put the mail in separate bags for the next town, so the only thing the baggage/mail car employee would have to do is deal with large parcels and such. There would have been no sortation equipment other than maybe a bag rack that would have held four bags in the car somewhere. But it probably would have gotten little use.
I would say go ahead and use the RPO car. As a person who worked in an industry that has different equipment for different jobs, I could easily see the railroad grabbing an RPO car to use for any job it may accomplish. Our corporation has used much larger aircraft and trucks than required just because of logistical problems caused by weather or accidents and such. Besides it’s your railroad.[:)]
Brent
Bert Pennypacker, the late author, worked as an RPO clerk on the RDG runs between Coatesville and Reading, about 30 miles.
Most typical of mail carried on branch lines was pouched (bagged) mail handled by the train’s baggageman from the baggage compartment. Still, there were instances where RPOs were used. For example, in 1935 the Southern Pacific Railroad operated RPOs on the Calexico Branch, Coos Bay Branch, Jawbone Branch, Placerville Branch, Mina Branch, Santa Cruz Branch, and Lake Tahoe Branch. Since most branchline passenger service didn’t last into WWII, any RPO service died with the train. At least a couple of SP’s branches had passenger and RPO service into the 1950s, including the Mina (NV) Branch.
The Mina Branch was 129 miles long, not including the 42-mile run on the mainline from Sparks to Hazen. The run, one-way, took about seven hours. The train was a mixed passenger and freight train, which included a combination Baggage/RPO car and a chair car.
All the RPOs assigned to SP branches were fifteen feet. The PO rented RPO space in increments of 15 feet: 15 feet, 30 feet, and 60 feet. Fifteen and 30-foot RPOs were part of a combination Baggage/RPO car, so those cars were usually around 60 to 70 feet long in total.
So, if you’re running passenger trains, I say “go for it” if you want. I recommend a combination Baggage/RPO car, however, and not a full RPO.
Mark
Thanks to all for the good info. You’ve given me the excuse I was looking for to put this RPO in service on the branch. I don’t like to resort to the it’s-your-railroad crutch. Even though my layout is freelanced, I like to run it with a degree of plausibility.
I think (re the original post) it would depend on how isolated the towns were. If they’re isolated mountain towns that can only be reached by rail, it would probably make sense to use an RPO on the line. Remember too that the farther back you go, the more people used the mail. When my Dad started with the US Post Office in 1943 postcards were I think 1 or 2 cents with postage, and regular mail was maybe 3 cents postage. Back then some folks would send out 2-300 Christmas cards every year for example, sending them to all their family and friends and acquaintances like their local butcher and baker and their Doctor etc. etc.
BTW the Rivarossi cars actually aren’t “shorties”, they’re all accurate models of C&NW cars that were 60’ long. In the heavyweight era, many railroads owned RPO and Baggage cars that were only 60’ long, so those cars are correct (at least in overall size and appearance) for a number of railroads. RPO, Baggage, Combines and Coaches normally were 70’ (or slightly less) until the streamlined cars started to come in. Only Diners, Pullmans and Observation cars were usually 80’ long.
Hello J.E.,
As has been pointed out, the Rivarossi 60-foot RPO car is a full-length model, and it represents a car with the largest mail-handling space, or “apartment,” specified by the Railway Mail Service. As such it would be more appropriate on a long-distance train carrying U.S. Mail than on a branch line. Cars with smaller RPO apartments – the standard sizes went down through steps of 30 feet, 15 feet, and even less – would be more likely to be used on a branchline mail train. These smaller apartments were often combined in cars with baggage and express space, sometimes with passenger seating, and sometimes with both. A type CO combine, as specified by the Association of American Railroads, included mail, baggage-express, and passenger compartments, and might serve as an entire train on a lightly trafficked branch. Some gas-electric and RDC cars also included small RPO apartments.
So long,
Andy
We all do it (using “nominal” rather than accurate lengths to describe cars). Nevertheless, we, and especially readers/listeners, should keep in mind that these 60, 70-foot, etc. descriptions are usually not the actual external lengths of the prototype cars or accurate models. Those descriptive lengths (which in the prototype are the internal lengths) don’t include the one or two vestibules, if any, of the cars, and the lengths are rounded. Two accurately-made “60-foot” models of Southern Pacific I recently acquired were a baggage car measuring 61 feet (no vestibules) and a news agent car (coach) measuring 67 feet (two vestibules), not including the diaphrams and rounding to the nearest foot.
Mark
If someone questions your use of a 60-foot RPO car, tell them the regular combination RPO/Baggage car was damaged in a fire and the full-length RPO is temporarily substituting.
Mark
This may be a case where doing something is technically ‘wrong’, but wouldn’t really look wrong. I’d think a train made up of an RPO and a couple of coaches will look good going down a branchline.
In the US, ONLY a Post Office Employee would have handled individual pieces of mail. Yes, Railroad employees would have delivered sealed mail bags/pouches and parcels.
Many short runs did have RPO service to speed the sorting/delivery of the mail at each end. Standard RPO section designs started at 15’ with 30’ and 60’ being more common. Many small roads/branch lines had combination RPO/baggage/coach cars with 15’ RPO sections do to the small volume.
RPO sections where locked and only USPS employees where allowed in the RPO section. That is why they where almost always at the head end, easy switching and no need for train crews to enter.
It is my understanding that 15’ sections where commonly worked by only one employee.
One RPO side note, ALL USPS workers asigned to RPO service carried a handgun to “protect” themselves and the mail. This rule stayed in effect until the end of the RPO service.
Sheldon
I asked this question of some very knowledgable PRR fans who indicated much of the branchline RPO work on the PRR was eliminated just before and during the Great Depression of the late 1920’s. Only rare instances survived beyond then. I suspect that may be true of all railroads that were not the sole source of connection to the outside world. I would expect it to be extremely rare by WW2 for instance. Mainline trains, on the other hand, that travelled between major cities on fast schedules allowed excellent and frequent delivery times and prevented back ups until air delivery became the norm.
I presume the mail is loaded, and the employee is just enjoying the view.
My favorite train: the Mina (branch) Mixed, with an RPO/Baggage car and chair car, accompanied by a Mikado and a few freight cars.
My Dad started in the Post Office at the Main Post Office in downtown Minneapolis in 1943. One of the things he did was assist the…I think the title was the “armorer” or something like that??..anyway, the guy who kept and maintained the pistols that the RPO clerks and other employees used. My Dad also went down to the Great Northern and Milwaukee Road depots to pick up mail arriving by train, and bring them back to the main post office which was very near both depots. I believe he said he had to wear a sidearm doing that job also.
One downside of being an RPO clerk was you normally ended up with a bad case of ‘the shakes’ from the constant buffeting and pounding of the rails, so my Dad used to tease one of his friends that was an senior RPO clerk that if there ever was any shooting to be done, to let my Dad do it, rather than having the clerk pull out his gun and start waggling it around in all directions. [:)]
Both of the photos posted by Mark Pierce show examples of cars with the 15-foot RPO apartment. The St.J&L.C., was, strictly speaking, a short line rather than a branch line, but for the terms of this discussion there’s not much difference. On the SP car, the RPO is combined with baggage and express space.
So long,
Andy
The 223-page book by Edward M. DeRouin, Moving Mail and Express by Rail, from Pixels Publishing, is very worthwhile if you’re interested in the subject.
Mark
This is a contemporary picture, taken at the old SP shop area in Sacramento near the California Railroad Museum. The SP/T&NO 40-foot car was originally an RPO, then reconfigured as a combination RPO/baggage car, and last used as a caboose on the San Francisco peninsula. I wonder how its restoration has progressed. Around a half-dozen like it were built. I don’t know whether they were used in RPO service on any of SP’s branchlines, but they would seem to be good candidates with their 15-foot RPO compartments in the RPO/baggage configuration…
Mark
Wabash train numbers 12 and 13 that ran btw Fort Wayne, Indiana and Toledo, Ohio had an RPO/baggage car at least into the early 50’s.These short trains also exchanged a coach and a sleeper with night trains numbers 2 and 3 (The Detroit and St. Louis Limiteds that ran btw those two cities) on the mainline at Fort Wayne. The line from Fort Wayne to Toledo was not a branchline but part of the original mainline btw Toledo and St. Louis but by then had been downgraded with Detroit having long since become more important.
On account this connection at Fort Wayne, one could get on a sleeper in St. Louis and ride all the way to Toledo, undisturbed, arriving in the early morning at Toledo or vice versa. Numbers 12 and 13 were typically only three or four cars in length from what I understand.
Train numbers 1 and 4 that eventually were known as the Cannon Balls ran in the daytime and that is why numbers 2 and 3 were known as the “night trains”.
I would say that running an RPO car on a branchline might be very plausible if the branch came of the main and ended at a major city. Why not add a sleeper too?
I suppose even if the branchline ended at a small town in a remote area, you could still warrant an RPO if there was a business there that received and sent a lot of mail. At one time there was a pretty big business in mail-order seeds for example (for different types of flowers etc.) so a company in the mail-order seed business might have like a warehouse or something in the town, with their seed-growing fields being out in the nearby country.