Travelling Post Office

This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order.
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

These are the opening lines of WH Auden’s poem ‘Night Mail’, written for the film of that name commissioned by the GPO more than 80 years ago, to tell the story of the London to Glasgow ‘Postal Special’ and the men who worked for it.

When you visit The Engine House, you will have the opportunity to see how quickly you can sort some letters into all the pigeonholes in our own Travelling Post Office, and also to see extracts from the ‘Night Mail’ film, produced in 1936!

Mail had been moved by Britain’s railways since 1830, soon using dedicated coaches which later became known as Travelling Post Offices, or simply as TPOs. Some were attached to normal passenger trains, but others were trains solely for the carriage of mail.

Some were fitted with a net to allow the high speed collection of mailbags at a number of locations along the route, and apparatus to drop off other bags at the same time. This speeded things up by reducing the number of stops made by the train, but was discontinued in 1971.

One advantage of TPOs for the early days was the possibility to sort the mail on the train, rather than before or after the journey, and a number of the TPO coaches known as Sorting Vans were built for this purpose. As sorting became more and more mechanised, sorting on the train became unviable, and eventually, following a phased withdrawal, the final TPO ran on the night of 9th January 2004. To this day, however, some mail continues to be carried by rail, although there are no postal staff on board, and most mail in the UK is carried by road or air.

A number of TPO vehicles were built between 1959 and 1977 based on the BR Mark 1 coach, of which we have several running on the SVR. The last TPO ones were built long after Mark 1 coaches ceased being built for passenger use. It is one of these, number 80300, the proto

type BR Mark 1 Post Office Sorting carriage built at Wolverton in 1959, which is preserved on the SVR. It came to the SVR in 1997, initially being used as a visitor centre at Highley, but has been in the Engine House since it opened in 2008.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers’ declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations.