Railway Mail Service Library - The Collection

The Collection

The RMS Library has every major book published about the Railway Mail Service/Postal Transportation Service (RMS/PTS). It also has many periodical articles written about en route distribution, and continually seeks ones that are not represented. There are six types of original-source documentation in the collection, however. These are:

1. photographs of HPO and RPO vehicles
2. THE RAILWAY POST OFFICE and POSTAL TRANSPORT JOURNAL issues between 1905 and 1959
3. oral recollections of former clerks on audio and video tapes, as well as movies about the RMS/PTS
4. general orders describing weekly changes within several divisions
5. general- and standpoint-schemes of mail distribution
6. schedules of mail trains/routes. Schemes and schedules are particularly helpful for understanding how the network of mail transportation and distribution activities operated, as well as when routes began, ended, or underwent significant changes.

Since 1982, several major additions have been made to the collection. These include the Edwin Bergman scheme and schedule collection, Lloyd Jackson's, John Kay's, Lawrence Kruse's, Ed Maloney's, and Roy Schmidt's postal artifacts, Carm Cosentino's Transfer Office covers, Charles Scott's Fifth Division RMS records, worldwide postal emblems assembled by Len Cohen, James Mundy's postal locks, Lt. Col (ret) A. B. "Chip" Komoroske's railroad books, H. W. "Red" Reed's post office route maps, John McClelland's 1905 to 1949 bound issues of THE RAILWAY POST OFFICE, as well as Paul Nagle's set of the POSTAL TRANSPORT JOURNAL between 1950 and 1959. A multitude of other historically-significant resources have been acquired from many former railway and highway postal clerks.