In the United States a railway post office, commonly abbreviated as RPO, was a railroad car that was normally operated in passenger service as a means to sort mail en route, in order to speed delivery. The RPO was staffed by highly trained Railway Mail Service postal clerks, and was off-limits to the passengers on the train. In the UK, the equivalent term was Travelling Post Office (TPO).
From the middle of the 19th century, many American railroads earned substantial revenues through contracts with the U.S. Post Office Department (USPOD) to carry mail aboard high-speed passenger trains; and the Railway Mail Service enforced various standardized designs on RPOs. In fact, a number of companies maintained passenger routes where the financial losses from moving people were more than offset by transporting the mail.
Read more about Railway Post Office: History, Standardization, Cancellation Stamps, Decline and Withdrawal, Preservation
Famous quotes containing the words post office, railway, post and/or office:
“A demanding stranger arrived one morning in a small town and asked a boy on the sidewalk of the main street, “Boy, where’s the post office?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, then, where might the drugstore be?”
“I don’t know.”
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“I don’t know.”
“Say, boy, you don’t know much, do you?”
“No, sir, I sure don’t. But I ain’t lost.””
—William Harmon (b. 1938)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
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—Emily Post (1873–1960)
“Notwithstanding the unaccountable apathy with which of late years the Indians have been sometimes abandoned to their enemies, it is not to be doubted that it is the good pleasure and the understanding of all humane persons in the Republic, of the men and the matrons sitting in the thriving independent families all over the land, that they shall be duly cared for; that they shall taste justice and love from all to whom we have delegated the office of dealing with them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)