The Railroad Post Office

Prior to use of the railroads, the US Postal Service utilized stagecoaches to deliver the mail.  The Post Office Department recognized the value of rail to move mail as early as November 30, 1832, when stagecoach contractors on a route from Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, were granted an allowance of $400 per year for carrying the mail on the railroad as far as West Chester from December 5, 1832.
   
A separate compartment was set aside for the mails. The postal agent usually rode in the baggage car and was at first the baggage man or other employee of the stage company or railroad.

Click on the button below to see how mail was picked up "on the fly" after being sorted at the railroad station.

Picking Up the Mail

In 1837, the Post Office Department began appointing "route agents" of its own on some lines.  The first recorded agent was John E. Kendall, who rode from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.  Others soon followed, and each route agent was given a hand postmarker to stamp local letters received along the way.
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An Act of July 7, 1838, designated all United States railroads as post routes, and railroad mail service increased rapidly.

In 1840, mail agents were appointed to make exchanges of mail, attend to delivery, and receive and forward all unpaid way letters and packages received. The route agents opened the pouches from local offices, separated mail for other local points on the line for inclusion in the pouches for those offices, and sent the balance to distributing Post Offices for further sorting. Gradually, the clerks began to make up mail for connecting lines and local offices, and the idea of sorting mail on the cars evolved. (Learn more in the Theodore Vail portion of this exhibit.)

On August 28, 1864, the first U.S. railway post office (RPO) route was established officially when George B. Armstrong, Chicago’s assistant postmaster, placed a car equipped for general distribution in service between Chicago and Clinton, Iowa, on the Chicago and North Western Railroad.

In 1889, the Overland Transcontinental line, which extended the NY & Chicago service westward to San Francisco, became the first transcontinental Fast Mail to the Pacific.

When railway mail service began, the cars were equipped primarily to sort and distribute letter mail. By about 1869, other mail was being sorted. Parcel Post service, added in 1913, soon outgrew the limited space aboard trains. Terminals, established adjacent to major railroad stations, allowed parcels to be sorted then loaded into mail cars and RPOs for transport to cities and towns.

This item is on display at NHTM

​Mail could be dropped by individuals wishing to mail a letter into a RPO car while it was sitting at the station platform.  A typical mail slot was installed in the side of the car near the door and it was of sufficient height to be reached by someone standing on the platform.

​Clerks in charge of RPOs had to have stamps available, in case they were needed by the public. Stamps on letters mailed at the postal car or at depot letter boxes were canceled by a hand postmarker, showing the name of the RPO, the train number, and the date.
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Info: Clarence R. Wilking

In 1930, more than 10,000 trains moved mail. Following passage of the Transportation Act of 1958, which allowed the discontinuance of money-losing passenger trains, mail-carrying passenger trains began to decline rapidly. By 1965, only 190 trains carried mail.

On April 21, 1968, Assistant Postmaster General Hartigan issued a news release concerning RPO service. It stated that RPO cars on 162 passenger trains in the nation would be phased out of service prior to the end of the year, affecting 2,224 postal workers.
By 1970, the railroads carried virtually no First-Class Mail.

On April 30, 1971, the Post Office Department terminated seven of the eight remaining routes. The last railway post office, which operated between New York and Washington, D.C., on Penn Central/Conrail, made its final run on June 30, 1977.

Highway and air congestion and an increase in the weight of catalogs and advertising mail during the 1980s led to renewed rail use. Amtrak carried mail on many trains, and freight trains pulled flatcars holding trailers full of mail. In 1993, Amtrak and the Postal Service reintroduced the RoadRailer®, special intermodal equipment that could travel on highways and on rails without having to be hoisted onto a railroad flatcar. ​

Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, rail transportation of mail helped close the gap caused by temporary disruptions to commercial air service.
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Amtrak stopped carrying mail in October 2004, although the nation’s freight railroads continue to carry mail through their intermodal service.

The Route Agent/postal clerk

The duties of the route agent included accompanying the mails to the train and receiving them in his compartment (or in his part of the baggage car). Right before the departure of the train, he opened the letter box on the depot platform and took out late-mailed letters.

Before 1847, when stamps were introduced, the route agent made out waybills for collection upon delivery of the letters. The letters were then tied with the other letters in brown wrapping paper and addressed to a DPO (Distribution Post Office); these packets so wrapped were referred to as "mails."  DPOs were important post offices in centers of large areas, counties, or states, to which mail was sent for distribution.

• By 1873, there were 752 railway postal clerks in the United States.
• With the enactment of the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, all postal employees were placed under Civil Service -- no longer could clerks be appointed merely because they knew the right people.
• State general schemes and mail train schedules appeared, along with cards and practice cases to aid in preparation for examinations.
• A service rating system of merits and demerits and a one-year probationary period were introduced to weed out the politically appointed incompetent clerks.
• A standard system was introduced for the proper "make up" of all mails which defined the duties of post office crews and RPO clerks.
• In 1902, the number of divisions had been increased to eleven; there were 8,794 clerks; 179,902 miles of RPO routes; 1,278 steam railroads; 23 trolley RPOs; and 49 boat-line RPOs.
• By 1907, there were 14,000 railway postal clerks in the United States. In 1908, legislation was passed granting $1,000 in death benefits for any clerk killed while on duty.
• In 1911, RPO clerks received their first travel allowance, 75 cents per day. That same year Congress also passed the first "steel car law," which provided that full RPO cars had to be constructed under rigid safety specifications, and built of equal strength to other cars of the train. July 1, 1916, was set as the deadline for withdrawal of all mainline wooden cars.
• By 1915, there were more than 20,000 clerks; most of the increase was due to the establishment of the new terminals. There were 914 full RPO cars and 3,040 apartment RPO cars operating on 216,000 miles of track.
• The 1920s brought an improvement in working conditions; e.g., all 60 foot RPO cars built after 1912 were required to be of all-steel construction, thus satisfying the top grievance of the clerks for years.
• The first retirement law was passed in 1920, providing pensions of $180 to $720 annually.

• Beginning in 1921, RPO clerks were required to carry revolvers, surplus W.W. I Army Colt 45s.Due to their size and weight, it was not necessary that the revolvers be worn by the clerks, but they had to keep them handy should they be needed. These guns were replaced in the 1930s by the Post Office Department's snub-nosed 38s. Because these guns were of a smaller size and of lighter weight, clerks were required to wear them at all times while on duty.

• By 1925, a RPO clerk's basic salary was $2,450 per annum (one grade higher than that of post office clerks) and there was a 48-hour work week, with seven holidays during the year.
• The RPO clerks who were furloughed in 1968, when the RPO service was discontinued, either retired or were placed in post offices at or near their homes. If there was no assignment in his grade at the post office assigned, the clerk was permitted to keep his higher grade for two years, after which he had to take a reduction.

It was dangerous work

From 1877 to 1884, 25 clerks were killed and 147 were seriously injured out of 3,153 employed; from 1885 to 1892 the figures jumped to 43 and 463, respectively.

The most historical of all mail train wrecks was made famous by the song, "Wreck of the Old 97."

The Wreck of the Old 97 was an American rail disaster involving the Southern Railway mail train, officially known as the Fast Mail, while en route from Monroe, Virginia, to Spencer, North Carolina, on September 27, 1903. Due to excessive speed in an attempt to maintain schedule, the train derailed at the Stillhouse Trestle near Danville, Virginia, where it careened off the side of a 75-foot trestle, killing eleven on-board personnel and injuring seven others. The wreck inspired a famous railroad ballad, which was the focus of a convoluted copyright lawsuit but became seminal in the genre of country music.
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To help correct the injustice of the government's not paying death benefits in these early days, the clerks organized their own Railway Mail Mutual Benefit Association in 1874.  Each member was assessed $1.10 upon the death of any other member, and $2,000 was paid to the latter's beneficiary.

Railway mail association

Using your phone's camera, this QR code will take you to a recording of "Wreck of the Old 97"

In 1886, to protect the interest of clerks, the "Brotherhood of Railway Mail Postal Clerks" was organized and gradually took over the fight for better wages and working conditions. In 1898, a Beneficiary Department was added, paying $4,000 for accidental death and $18 weekly for disability. This organization became the "Railway Mail Association" in 1904; that name was kept for 45 years, after which it was changed to the "National Postal Transportation Association." In 1899, the association started printing a monthly magazine, the "Railway Post Office" which was one of the finest published by any union organization. In 1949, the name of the magazine was changed to the "Postal Transport Journal."
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The RMA never coerced any clerk to join, leaving each clerk free to exercise his "right to work" by joining or declining to join. As a result, nearly every clerk eligible was a member, probably the finest record of loyalty of any voluntary labor union in the world.

The item to the left is on display at NHTM