U. S. Railway Post Office Car

Description

No. 103

Government regulations required Railway Post Office cars in 1910. The RF&P owned five. American Car & Foundry built this one in 1916. Some of the first steel cars were postal cars. They were important revenue sources for the railroad. The elimination of the postal cars caused some of the less profitable passenger trains to be eliminated. This car was one of the last cars removed from service by the Post Office Department in 1970.

Mail Service personnel had a complicated system of sorting and dispatching mail to various stops along the rail. Inside the cars, clerks sorted the mail in a series of bins and trays. They placed the mail in bags, then hung them on steel racks ready to be dispatched. For those towns where the train did not stop, mail delivery would come from staff who shoved the mail from the train while it sped by the station. Simultaneously, a metal crane extending from the train retrieved mailbags that hung from a metal arm at the station.