1. Washington Chapter, National Railway Historical Society
Baltimore & Ohio
Railway Post Offices
Washington Chapter, National Railway Historical Society
75th Anniversary
May 17th, 2019
Good afternoon! My name is Frank Scheer and I am Curator of the Railway Mail Service Library. During this half-hour, I’ll summarize Railway Post Office (RPO) history on the Baltimore and Ohio. A handout includes this presentation as well as other items you may find of interest. Also, a DVD depicts how RPOs interconnected within a national network of mobile units and stationary facilities. It is available for $20, with proceeds going toward Boyce station maintenance expenses.
The 1913 N&W station at Boyce, Virginia, has been the RMS Library’s home since This specialized library supports research in worldwide RPO history.
Railway Mail Service Library in the former N&W Railway station at Boyce, Virginia

2. Presentation Overview
Overview of the Railway Mail Service
Functions of a Railway Post Office
“Linking 13 Great States With The Nation” via the Washington, DC, Gateway
My commentary will the covered in under 20 minutes so that we can stay on schedule. That is a reason for providing handouts with notes, so that if I move too swiftly, an explanation for presentation slides is available.
First, we’ll review highlights of the Railway Mail Service. Next, we will cover what a crew accomplished within a RPO car. Finally, I’ll touch upon how RPO services on the B&O were interconnected at Washington, DC.

3. RMS “Eagle” badge introduced in 1899
Overview of the Railway Mail Service
The Railway Mail Service (RMS) was an operational unit within the Post Office Department. It was under the jurisdiction of the Second Assistant Postmaster General, which was a political appointment within the Executive Branch. It’s operations were financed by Congressional appropriations. For this reason, many aspects of the Post Office Department’s functions were a means for Congress or the President to reach out to the American public. The RMS was one of several service innovations that were spawned and nurtured through federal tax dollars.
This federal linkage was a mixing of benefits and drawbacks. Some services had to be created or changed by Congressional statute. In 1838, Congress enacted a law making all railroads as “post roads.” Therefore, rail carriers could not refuse to handle U.S. Mail as many attempted in early years because they perceived the compensation was inadequate. Establishment of “fast mail” services required an act authorizing higher pay for accelerated schedules. The mandate that steel bodies and under-frames be used for RPOs was mandated in the 1913 appropriations bill. It is often referred to as the “Steel Car Act.”
A death knell for en route distribution was rung in the 1950s when several congressional actions and political appointments to the Post Office Department began the shift of intercity mail away from rail systems. One was the authority to air-lift first class mail via air lines on a space-available basis. The other was soliciting long-distance storage mail transportation via highway carriers. So, within 113 years, we observe the creation, maturation, and decline of railway mail.
There is no official emblem of the RMS. However, the “Eagle” badge which was introduced in 1899 as the “official uniform” of a Railway Mail Clerk is often used as the service’s icon.
RMS “Eagle” badge introduced in 1899

4. Railway Mail Service
Experimental route in 1862 between Hannibal and St. Joseph, Missouri
First permanent route established on August 28, between Chicago, Illinois, and Clinton, Iowa
Final run on June 30, 1977, between New York, New York, and Washington, DC
The concept of sorting mail within a specially-equipped postal car on a train was not originated within the USA. Great Britain developed a network of “Traveling Post Offices” that started earlier and lasted longer than RPOs. Canada likewise had a Railway Mail Service and called its units “Mail Cars.” These also pre-dated USA RPOs and were discontinued in 1972.
Mail was transported on some railroads between 1828 and 1864 under the care of a “Route Agent” (RA). This person was much like an express messenger: he accompanied the mail to load and unload locked pouches at terminals and intermediate stations. The RA also carried a pouch in which letters received from the public were postmarked and dispatched to a “Distributing Post Office” (DPO) at the end of the run.
The 1862 experimental service was a first attempt to perform distribution en route. However, this was limited to opening pouches to remove letters destined for movement via the Butterfield Overland Stage at St. Joseph, Missouri. This eliminated a delay in sorting the mail at that town since the coach departed soon after the train’s arrival. The reasons why this activity is not considered the beginning of the RMS are: 1) it was discontinued less than a year after it started; 2) mail distribution was not performed for intermediate post office; and 3) there is no record that service was performed from St. Joseph back to Hannibal.
The Chicago and Clinton RPO establishment coincided with George B. Armstrong being appointed the first Superintendent of the RMS. The New York & Washington RPO was the third route established, and operated from 1866 to 1977 –the longest continuously-operating route in the USA.
The RMS was a tremendous innovation for its era and was the backbone of intercity mail transportation and distribution for a century. How many services started in 2011 will likely be operating in 2111?

5. Railway Mail Service
Railway Mail Service (RMS) was renamed Postal Transportation Service in 1949.
The Postal Transportation Service (PTS) changed to the Bureau of Transportation in 1960.
During most of the 20th Century, there were 15 RMS/PTS divisions. B&O RPO routes were in the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 15th Divisions. This presentation focuses upon the Third Division.
The USA railroad network reached its zenith in track miles around This represented the high-water mark of the RMS as well in the number of routes and route miles traversed annually. However, mail volume continued to rise annually, with a trough during the 1930s and intermediate peak during the World War II years. The growth in mail matter was gradually siphoned away from rail transport to alternate modes, primarily highway carriers and airlines. The name change to the Postal Transportation Service (PTS) reflected the growing diversity in approaches for moving mail.
The transition to the Bureau of Transportation (BT) was more than just a name change. The PTS mainly continued the RMS structure and operations for eleven years. The BT separated personnel and operations. Postal Transportation Clerks were renamed Mobile Unit Clerks and placed under the jurisdiction of postmasters at route termini. BT was only responsible for arranging and operating services, as well as accounting and payment.
Equally significant during the BT era was the rise of mechanized mail processing. The focus of the Post Office Department shifted from en route distribution to concentrating mail volume at Sectional Center Facilities (SCFs) and maximizing through-put on expensive equipment. RPOs and Highway Post Offices (HPOs) were incompatible with this revised focus and were eliminated as SCFs became operational.
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad strategically linked several major urban centers, so it is no surprise that it was a significant provider of RPO services for ten decades. The coverage of RMS/PTS divisions were:
Second: New York and New Jersey
Third: Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia
Fifth: Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky
Sixth: Illinois and Iowa
Fifteenth: Pennsylvania and the lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad

6. Functions of a Railway Post Office
II.
Functions of a Railway Post Office
A 1944 magazine advertisement depicting the New York & Chicago ED/MD/WD RPO trains 25 and 26. B&O 60-feet RPOs had nearly identical interiors and performed the same functions.
So what work was done within a RPO? This advertisement appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic, and other publications during It provided a good overview of the principal functions performed within any RPO. We’ll discuss some of these in the next two slides. The DVD videos provide much better insights to the orchestrated movements within a crew.
A sixty-feet “full” RPO is depicted in this illustration. These cars were mainly assigned to trunk-line routes, such as the Washington & Chicago, Wheeling & Chicago, Washington & Grafton, Grafton & Cincinnati, as well as the Cincinnati & St. Louis.

7. Railway Post Office Functions
A Railway Post Office (RPO) enabled en route distribution of several mail classes: first (letters), second (newspapers), and fourth (parcel post) which had special handling or special delivery.
Air mail was frequently diverted to RPOs during inclement weather.
Registered mail, a service of first class, was under the care of one clerk.
RPOs primarily worked letter mail, newspapers/periodicals, and mail which had a preferential service added, such as special handling, special delivery, or registered matter. The RPO –regardless of size– consisted of three areas. The primary focus was the distribution cases where letters were sorted. A second area consisted of pouch/sack racks and overhead boxes. When bundles of mail from the “pigeon holes” were tied out as a bundle, that group of letters was put in a pouch along the rack for dispatch. That bag went to a destination post office, or to a connecting RPO that would perform additional sorting.
Sacks were in a portion of the rack area, into which newspapers, magazines, and parcels were placed. Just like the letters, the sacks were sent to post offices or another RPO. Some also went to stationary RMS/PTS facilities called Terminals. Terminals were in rented space in major railroad stations or adjacent to them. Most parcel post plus any un-worked mail left over at the end of a run was sorted at Terminals.
After air mail was introduced as a service in 1918, the first leg or last leg of its journey was often in a RPO between a community and an air stop. Planes were often grounded because of weather or mechanical difficulties. On those occasions, mail was shifted to the RPO network to minimize delay.
A schedule of mail routes specified what classes of mail, as well as the states or cities, that would be distributed within a RPO. Not all trains on the same route performed identical service. This is because the time of day and connections available varied.
Registered mail has always had a high profile because of its value. There were hand-to-hand transfers and signed receipts to assure accountability during each step of the items progress through the mail transportation network. If you see a photo of a RPO crew and observe one sitting on a stool, that person was the registered mail clerk. Everyone else for substantially an entire run. The registered mail clerk had to record registered mail received and dispatched, so there was frequent writing involved.

8. Railway Post Office Functions
Crews of Railway Mail Clerks staffed RPOs and were Post Office Department employees.
The average trip length for a 60-feet RPO crew was 300 miles. The longest RPO routes over the B&O were between Washington and Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh and Chicago, and Wheeling and Chicago.
Many crews had an additional two to four hours of “advance time” before departure from the initial terminal.
Crews ranged in size from one –usually found in a 15-feet apartment RPO– to 14 in a 60-feet RPO. If there were two or three 60-feet RPO cars in a train under the supervision of a general foreman, there were about 30 or 45 clerks in the crew. All were Post Office Department employees. The B&O did not have more than one 60-feet car for the same route in the same train, but may have had two RPO cars when two trains were combined on the same schedule. Each had its own crew, work assignments, and operated independently of each other.
Unlike railroad engine crews which had a “100-mile day,” Railway Mail Clerks often ran several hundred miles on trunk-line routes between major terminals. In addition, they often worked “advance time” before the departure from the origin station. The advance time consisted of setting up the car for work, loading mail into bins, and performing distribution. Mail was often received in waves, coming first from local post offices making dispatches to the train, followed by mail arriving from connecting RPOs.
A clerk’s eight-hour day was divided into 6 hours and 35 minutes of on-duty time, with one hour and 25 minutes allocated to home preparations and study. Thus, if a clerk was on duty for 13 hours and 10 minutes –and some runs were about that long when advance time was included– the clerk earned two days’ pay. The clerk was expected to do two hours and 50 minutes at home to prepare for the trip. This included updating information in schemes and schedules from weekly general orders, studying for case examinations, and preparing facing slips or labels for dispatches that will be made during the trip.

9. III.
“Linking 13 Great States With The Nation” via the Washington, DC, Gateway
The Baltimore and Ohio provided service on several key RPO routes that linked the mid-Atlantic and mid-west with northeast, southeast, western states. The chief routes included:
Washington and Chicago East Division/West Division RPO
Washington and Grafton, Grafton and Cincinnati, and Cincinnati and St. Louis RPO
Wheeling and Chicago RPO
Several other RPO lines filled in the network web covering the Baltimore and Ohio. Substantially every route mile of B&O trackage had RPO or closed-pouch service during the RMS/PTS era.
The picture of a train is circa A 60-feet RPO car is visible behind the locomotives.
Cincinnati & St. Louis RPO departing St. Louis, which will run east to Washington, DC

10. Mail Transportation on the B&O
Service was performed in three ways: RPO space, storage mail space, and Terminal/Transfer Offices
Railroads rented space on trains in RPOs and storage mail cars on the basis of capacity and mileage to the RMS/PTS. Term/TO facilities were leased to the RMS/PTS.
RPOs didn’t just serve post offices located along a railroad’s route. An illustration of connections at Washington, DC, depicts how the routes over the B&O were integrated into the national RMS/PTS network.
B&O owned the RPO cars and rented them to the RMS on a per mile basis. Storage mail cars were used according to space-used and mileage. Terminals and Transfer Office facilities were leased for stationary mail handling and distribution. Altogether, revenue from handling mail was a significant contribution to railroad operations.

11. Mail Transportation on the B&O
Several slides illustrate how RPO routes over the B&O connected with others radiating from Washington. A substantial amount of mail to and from each train connected with the Terminal RPO located within the city post office adjacent to Washington Union Station.
Selected pages from these primary source documents are provided with this presentation slide handout:
Washington Terminal Employee Timetable # , 218 4/6/46
RMS Schedule of Mail Routes
Second Division # 471, 01/14/46
Third Division # 555, 04/30/46
Fifteenth Division # 175, 02/20/46
B&O Passenger Consist Book # 6, 8/1/46
RPO routes over the B&O operated as a part of a national mail transportation network. Attachments to this presentation illustrate how these routes received mail from connections, as well as dispatched mail to other routes. Five primary source documents are credited with this information, from the RMS Library collection.
1946 was selected as an example year for two reasons. First, many trains were still operating with RPOs, prior to branch line abandonments and passenger train discontinuance. Second, many of the present B&O HS membership recall this era, so that there may be a personal connections with the trains that are cited.
The B&O consist book was donated to the RMS Library collection for this research project by Ric Nelson. Selected information is reproduced through the courtesy of the B&O HS.

12. Mail Transportation on the B&O
RPO Routes Terminating at Washington, DC, :
Washington & Chicago East Division.
Washington & Grafton (also called the Washington & St. Louis East Division)
New York, Baltimore and Washington.
There are several notable aspects of mail transportation history applicable to B&O services. Routes over the B&O were among the earliest to be established. The “Fast Mail” was created in 1875, which was the first all-mail train operated on an expedited schedule. Although Congress failed to fund the service after the first year, its capabilities to expedite mail handling became a proven concept. The funding was later restored and not only was the Fast Mail re-established, but similar mail-only RPO trains were added on other railroads.
Less heralded but equally innovative was the containerization of mail. It allowed faster loading and unloading at terminals, as well as facilitated transfers between trains. These were the same at B&O’ less-than-carload freight containers. This 1920s concept was well ahead of its time, establishing the intermodal principles commonly in use today. Not only does this approach reduce operating costs and time, it improves mail security as well as reduces damage from weather or handling.

13. Mail Transportation on the B&O
Washington & Chicago East Division
Eastbound trains 8, 10, 20, 22, and 34
Westbound trains 7, 11, 15, and 25
Connections to and from these trains:
Buffalo & Washington
New York & Washington
New York, Baltimore & Washington
Washington & Bluemont
Washington & Bristol
Washington & Charlotte
Washington & Cincinnati East Division
Washington & Florence
Washington & Grafton
Washington & Hamlet
Washington & Harrisonburg Highway Post Office
This slide as well as two others list the RPO-carrying trains assigned to a route. The list of routes below are those which made dispatches to the B&O RPO, or received dispatches from it, via Washington, DC.
Dispatches varied by train, as did the mail that was being connected. The additional pages attached to the presentation hand-out lists specific train numbers, times, and track numbers at Washington.

14. Mail Transportation on the B&O
Washington & Grafton
Eastbound trains 4 and 12
Westbound trains 1, 11, and 23
Connections to and from these trains:
Buffalo & Washington
New York & Washington
New York, Baltimore & Washington
Washington & Bristol
Washington & Charlotte
Washington & Chicago East Division
Washington & Cincinnati East Division
Washington & Florence
Washington & Hamlet

15. Mail Transportation on the B&O
New York, Baltimore and Washington
Northbound trains 2 and 6
Southbound trains 1 and 511
Connections to and from these trains:
Buffalo & Washington
New York & Washington
Washington & Bristol
Washington & Charlotte
Washington & Chicago East Division
Washington & Cincinnati East Division
Washington & Florence
Washington & Grafton
Washington & Hamlet

16. Mail Transportation on the B&O
Summary:
Mail connections at Washington were made two ways:
Direct pouch between trains handled through the Washington, DC, transfer office
Mail dispatched to the Terminal that was distributed and sent to a specific train.
Similar inter-route connections existed at all major B&O terminals as well as junction points.
Inter-city mail service for distances between 50 and 700 miles via the RPO network cannot be replicated today. Mail transit times for first class mail was typically next-day service. It was the rule –not the exception– that mail posted in Chicago or St. Louis was delivered in northeast corridor cities within 24 to 36 hours. That included Sundays and holidays if the recipient in a large city had a post office box.
RPO routes over the B&O played an important role in this national network. The crews in each RPO couldn’t have accomplished this service without connections, either directly with other RPOs or through a stationary Railway Mail Terminal. Washington, DC, has been an example. Similar connections existed across the B&O system.

17. 1880s Mail Crane with Catcher Pouch
Questions?
There’s only so much that one can cover during a 30 minute presentation. I’ll welcome your questions, but lets cover those after viewing the films. Please look for me following the presentation, or contact me via at My complete contact information appears on the last slide.
1880s Mail Crane with Catcher Pouch

18. Owney at Pittsfield, Massachusetts
Thank you!
Watch for the Owney stamp to be issued on July 26, Owney traveled on RPOs between 1888 and 1897 and was considered the mascot of the RMS.
I have a DVD with me which is $20 each with all proceeds going toward Boyce station maintenance. It includes MEN AND MAIL IN TRANSIT which is a training film prepared for the Post Office Department by the Department of Agriculture Film Unit. The other movie is MAIL IN MOTION was designed to be a recruitment film developed by the National Postal Transport Association, to interest non-postal employees to take the Civil Service Examination for Postal Transportation Clerks. Both movies were filmed on the Wash & Chicago ED RPO during 1956 using actual postal staff. Even the "subs" were really substitute clerks; The train in MEN AND MAIL IN TRANSIT is the Columbian westbound stopping at Cumberland and making a catch at Kensington, Maryland. These are not in actual trip sequence. The Metropolitan westbound appears in MAIL IN MOTION, with a stop at Harpers Ferry, WV. The H.P.O. is the Washington, Annapolis & Baltimore at Upper Marlboro, Maryland, and the A.M.F. is at Washington National Airport. All transfer office and other terminal scenes are at Washington's Union Station. The office scenes were on an upper floor of the former Washington, DC city post office at 2 Massachusetts Avenue. The terminal views were mostly on lower floors in that same building.
By the time these films was made, en route distribution was performed by the Postal Transportation Service (PTS). Although RPOs started operation in 1864 and were discontinued in 1977, the activities you see in this movie inside the RPO were largely the same throughout that 113-year era.
The picture in the slide shows Owney, a well-traveled dog who was adopted by Post Office clerks at Albany, New York, in He is generally considered to be the mascot of the RMS. He was taken to a photographer at Pittsfield, Massachusetts during one of his journeys and certainly rode over B&O lines during many of his trips. Watch for the new Owney stamp that will be issued in July!
Owney at Pittsfield, Massachusetts

19. Railway Mail Service Library
For more information:
Frank R. Scheer,
Railway Mail Service Library
117 East Main Street
Boyce, VA
I’ll welcome your questions as well as your visit to the RMS Library. After today’s presentation, please contact me via at . Thank you for attending!