This is the interior of the most recently constructed Great Northern Railway travelling post office. Notice the exchange apparatus fittings behind the sorters.
It was the idea of being able to carry on the ordinary business of life while travelling from one place to another which appealed to the imaginations of men whose experiences of travel had been limited to the cramped conditions of the mail coach. But I doubt whether they could have conceived of a time when we should breakfast, lunch, dine, and have comfortable beds on trains running at fifty miles an hour. And one of the latest developments of all, the providing of lady typists on trains for the benefit of business men travelling to and from London, would certainly have justified the enthusiastic prose of an earlier day. We take these things in a more complacent fashion; we talk of the increased economy and convenience as meeting a public demand, and we grumble at the railway which withholds luxuries from us.
There is no doubt, however, that the success of the Travelling Post Office was the first revelation to the railway companies, and to the public, of what could be done on a train while in motion, but much was needed in the direction of improving the permanent way and the springs and general make-up of the rolling stock before any further advances could take place. Perhaps on this ground alone we can spare a little sympathy for the Post Office servants, who during the long years when railway travelling was neither smooth nor comfortable, had to keep their heads and their feet while the train raced across country.
The first permanent sorting carriage was built by the Grand Junction Railway Company, and this carriage was fitted with an apparatus for exchanging mail bags en route. The appliance consisted of an iron frame covered with netting, and was fixed to the near side of the carriage. It was made to open out for the purpose of receiving a bag suspended from the arm of a standard erected beside the railway line. Simultaneously with the delivery of a bag into the carriage net, a bag was dropped on to the bare ground by another mechanical contrivance, guard boards being fixed by the side of the permanent way to prevent the bag from getting under the wheels of the carriage. This apparatus was first tried in 1838 on the London and Birmingham Railway at Boxmoor. On the 17th September 1838, the London and Birmingham Railway was opened throughout its entire length, and the Travelling Post Office was permanently established on that line. Two mails were despatched from Euston daily, the first a day mail at 11 A.M. and the night mail at 8.30 P.M.
The immediate effect of the introduction of the Travelling Post Office was to render unnecessary the making up of some 800 or 900 bags. Each town now made up one bag for the train, instead of the fourteen or fifteen which had to be made up for the mail coach, and the Travelling Post Office re-sorted the letters and made up bags for the various towns which it served. In the year 1843 the number of bags made up in the London and Preston Travelling Post Office down mail was 51 and in the up mail 44. The number of bags at present made up in the same Travelling Post Office, which now runs from London to Aberdeen, is nearly 400 on the down journey and about 300 on the up journey. In 1910 there were in Great Britain no less than 73 separate Travelling Post Offices, composed of 150 specially constructed carriages.
In 1848 the apparatus for exchanging letters was considerably altered and simplified. For the first time nets were fixed by the side of the permanent way in which were caught the bags delivered from the Travelling Post Office, and a new variety of winged carriage net was provided with detaching lines, which were used to grip and detach the pouch from the arm in which it was held. Many alterations have since been made in the working of this apparatus, but the principle of the thing remains the same.
In 1859 as a further means of accelerating the mails “the limited mail” train was started. Many people have doubtless wondered at this definition of an express train: they have probably connected it in some way with the idea of speed, but in reality it was nothing more than the application of the old regulation of the mail coach days to railway traffic. That is to say, the mails were to be the first consideration, and the passenger traffic was to be limited on these trains to the point where the speed or the availability of the train for mail purposes would not be interfered with. The first limited mail to run was the night train to Scotland.
An advance on the idea of the limited mail was made in 1885, when a special mail train was established on the London and North-Western and Caledonian Railways. This is a train devoted entirely to the mail service, and it runs in both directions between London and Aberdeen. Similar special trains run on the Great Western Railway between London and Penzance. One of the latest developments of the system is the provision of a late-fee box on the side of the carriage. The letter-box on the side of the carriage next to the platform is kept open while the train is standing in a station. The up-to-date sorting carriages are an immense improvement on those of the old pattern in the matter of easy movement. They are constructed with a view to reduce vibration to a minimum. All projections and angles are well padded, and this precaution is at all times necessary, as turning a curve at high speed frequently takes the sorters off their feet and sends them flying into corners or against the sides of the carriage.
In the new sorting carriages plate-glass bottoms are provided for the letter-sorting frames to enable the sorters to see at a glance that they have removed all the correspondence from each box at the time of despatch. This prevents letters being carried beyond their destination or left in the carriage at the journey's end.