Friends,
I was just a few days ago that we batted around mail and express
shipments on passenger trains. Well a somewhat parallel discussion
started on a Milwaukee Road Historical group regarding the mail trains
from Chicago Union Station to St. Paul. The train was called the Fast
Mail and like most trains of that sort it ran at night often with only
one rider coach. I won't quote the entire discussion because I don't
have the posters permission but I will relay some of the interesting items:
Often there were more PO employees on the train than paying passengers.
During the Christmas season as many as 5 RPO's were on the train with
the storage cars between them. Clerks would drag the bagged mail into
the RPO to be sorted along the route. Often there were up to 20 baggage
cars. Later on, the PO started using the Flex-Vans (NYC & MILW) for
mail shipments. The train did stop at many stations so trucks could be
backed up to the cars for off-loading (I don't know if that was hand
trucks or road trucks). It also talked about some cars being designated
for REA business and other LCL shipments--so there were actually three
different sorts of businesses using what we call head-end equipment!
Additionally switching of additional head-end equipment from meeting
trains was also done requiring the road power to be moved. Because of
all these stops the train had to get hauling between those stops, so
running at 90mph was the norm. The power was returning units from an
earlier Hiawatha train which generally used one E unit plus a FP-7. One
would assume they would have added an extra unit during the Christmas
season. There also was mention of money being transfered (perhaps a
Federal Reserve Bank transfer) requiring RR police and detectives while
at the station--so now you can add a couple of those Artista uniformed
cops and one one chasing the hobo too!
BTW, there is a wonderful photo of LCL or Parcel Post shipments lined up
on hand trucks awaiting a train in Don Heimberger's book (name escapes
me but it's one of those catch all books similar to the Don Ball series
and I might add includes at least one photo from our own Bob Nicholson).
My thoughts on such a long mail train like this would be it's hard to
imagine too many of our railroads being able to handle--several RPO's, a
dozen baggage/storage, perhaps some express reefers, a rider coach and
perhaps a couple of Pullmans in one trains--maybe Arden's UP layout.
That would make a great photo/video opportunity! However, I don't think
we have many steam engines available to power such a train if the cars
were of the Southwind heritage--does anybody do this? Perhaps the AM's
PA's would do the trick. So what we need to make it work on Arden's
layout is a bunch of midnight Fairies (or maybe I should have said
Elves) go to work on his scenery!
Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx
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