Location of tpo with nets in a mail train

[The Stationmaster]

3 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Daily, one up, one down, one spare.

 

In other words, out one night and back the next, at least for the longer runs. 

 

Yes although the number of spares seems to have been less that one for two judging by various GWR coach working circuits where some spares would cover  4 or 5 vehicles

[BlackFivesMatter]

I think the position of vehicles where staff are standing and required to walk around would make more sense for comfort at the front of a train, rather than the rear, due to the motion. (Same reason as the guards vehicle would be central in day a fast scheduled milk train. A slower running freight would be less of an issue.

 

Were tpo crews required to have sealers? 

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, BlackFivesMatter said:

I think the position of vehicles where staff are standing and required to walk around would make more sense for comfort at the front of a train, rather than the rear, due to the motion.

 

 

Perhaps, but would the comfort of postal workers have even been a consideration back in the day?  I would have expected the railways rather than the GPO to have decided such formations relative to passenger stock, and based it on practical convenience of shunting portions to/from various destinations given that they seem to have been dealing with a lot of train dividing or joining or connecting with other trains en route.

[keefer]

The talent would be sorting etc. on the move at all - I doubt the position in the train would make that much difference i.e. enough to influence the formation.

As Michael says, formations would be more likely to be what was operationally required taking into account overall capacity and any splitting/combining required en-route.

[Wheatley]

The sorters don't need to be at the front anymore than the catering staff on an express do, and there were a lot more things to burn or cut you in a kitchen car. In a full TPO (ie no passenger coaches) the POSs could be distributed throughout the train with bag tenders between.  

 

If you are attaching a single vehicle or a couple of vehicles to a passenger train it's operationally convenient to attach them to the front or back. 

 

Two examples from photos in one of Peter Johnson's books:

 

GW TPO 1970s - BPOT/POT/POS/POS/POT/BPOT

 

Midland TPO Going North, 1956 - BTK/CK/TK/TK/BG/POT/POS/POT. 

 

[The Johnster]

On 03/09/2022 at 18:00, Michael Hodgson said:

 

Perhaps, but would the comfort of postal workers have even been a consideration back in the day?  I would have expected the railways rather than the GPO to have decided such formations relative to passenger stock, and based it on practical convenience of shunting portions to/from various destinations given that they seem to have been dealing with a lot of train dividing or joining or connecting with other trains en route.

Letter sorting pigeonhole fittings are designed to be used standing up for speed, but seating is provided.  In order to discourage the sorters from spending too much time sitting down, which slows the sorting rate, the seats resemble old-fashioned tractor seats and are spectacularly uncomfortable.  I worked as a sorter at a Cardiff sorting office for a decade 1987-97, and about 18 months in my shoe size went up because my arches collapsed, a result of standing for long periods in the same position sorting.  The fittings on POS coaches are the same as in sorting offices. 
 

Big envelopes, packets, and bundled letters are sorted into bags hanging from metal frames, which of course has to be done standing up, but this is less tiring for your feet as you are moving a bit, shuffling around and shifting your weight about; it’s actually quite good physical exercise.  On a moving train, you have to compensate for the unpredictable motion as well, something of a skill in itself!  Again, the frames are the same as in sorting offices. 

[Sabato]

The Post Office Museum/Railway at Mount Pleasant has a mock up of a TPO sorting coach letter set. The game is to place the "envelopes" (slabs of wood addressed to various cities) in the appropriate hole. Sounds simple, but you have to get them all sorted before the floor stops bouncing around, and boy does it. I eventually got it down to one item before the "train stopped". It isn't easy.

[Stuart]

I have got rather more interested in TPOs since discovering that my granny, a village postwoman in Northumberland, delivered mail some of which had come off the ‘drop’ by the North Eastern TPO at Alnmouth.

Peter Johnson’s books are all very informative but I have just acquired a book by Brian White who was a TPO man based at Peterborough. From what I have gleaned from the chapters on the “apparatus” and accidents, a number of people were hurt/killed by sticking their heads out of windows and coming into contact with the suspended pouches on the ground delivery standard.

It may well be the case that where apparatus was in used on a train comprising TPO and passenger coaches, the TPO was situated at the front so that the pouches were collected into the TPO, the ground standard swung away from the line and therefore didn’t pose so much of a hazard to anybody with their heads out of the window.

So if ‘apparatus’ is being used, maybe the TPO should be at the front, if not, then front or back.

 

The book also cleared up a question in my mind about ‘Tenders’ in Post Office railway terms.

POS - was the actual sorting vehicle - Post Office Sorting carriage.

POT - was simply a stowage vehicle,, but Post Office Tender? White records that one was added to the Peterborough-Crewe TPO simply to carry Datapost.

Bag Tender - White describes this as a ‘TPO carriage or carriages that handled only bags of mail and on which no sorting took place requiring only one or two men’.

 

if you want to run a TPO carriage and your chosen line doesn’t really justify a TPO, call it a Bag Tender ( but Rule 1 applies anŷway).

 

Stuart

[David Murray-Smith]

The photograph of the Jubilee with postal coaches at Kittybrewster is very interesting. I saw these workings between Aberdeen Joint Station and Kittybrewster many times in the 1950s and early 1960s but never actually saw the coaches being turned on the turntable at 61A. This is certainly what was done as there was no triangle available there. The locomotive that had brought the service north from Perth early in the morning waited on the train at Aberdeen while postal sacks were removed and then it worked the postal coaches on to Kittybrewster. It then brought them back to Aberdeen Joint station about 10am to 10.30am and they were left (in Clayhills sidings I think) until they were added to the front of the set of coaches forming the 3.30pm Aberdeen to Glasgow. An interesting point of detail is that the working back from Kittybrewster always involved the locomotive (still facing north) propelling the postal coaches and I have never worked out why that was the case. That movement was always carried out at very slow speed with a lookout man hanging out of the window of the leading postal coach and communicating with the engine crew using hand signals. Unfortunately, I have no photographs of the postal coaches being propelled in that way.

[Michael Hodgson]

On 05/11/2022 at 09:56, Stuart said:

I have got rather more interested in TPOs since discovering that my granny, a village postwoman in Northumberland, delivered mail some of which had come off the ‘drop’ by the North Eastern TPO at Alnmouth.

Peter Johnson’s books are all very informative but I have just acquired a book by Brian White who was a TPO man based at Peterborough. From what I have gleaned from the chapters on the “apparatus” and accidents, a number of people were hurt/killed by sticking their heads out of windows and coming into contact with the suspended pouches on the ground delivery standard.

It may well be the case that where apparatus was in used on a train comprising TPO and passenger coaches, the TPO was situated at the front so that the pouches were collected into the TPO, the ground standard swung away from the line and therefore didn’t pose so much of a hazard to anybody with their heads out of the window.

So if ‘apparatus’ is being used, maybe the TPO should be at the front, if not, then front or back.

As it happens I too have a relative who runs a village Post Office in Northumberland - or at least she owns it, employs staff but does a much higher paid job herself - no TPO however.

 

If a train heading north through Newcastle is diverted via the other bridge on the approach to the city, the TPO would end up the wrong way round, so they must have had specific instructions about not doing so!

 

Your description is consistent with my understanding of the practice from reading various sources.  However, I don't think it would necessarily have applied where the train was only mails, and these seem to have attached and detached vehicles at various connecting stops en route so I wouldn't be at all surprised if you could get more than one TPO with the apparatus on some trains at least for part of their journey. 

 

 

 

Given that the gangway was usually offset, you'd have to turn the whole set, not just the TPO, so a triangle or a reverse loop would be a lot more practical than a turntable, unless you had "handed" version of the TPO, or perhaps a gangway offset the other way?  It might also have made sense for a set to convey a TPO facing the right way for Up line services and another the other way round for Down trains, saving the need to turn, but I've no idea whether this happened at all.

 

Sometimes trains had more than one pouch to drop off at some places so more than one delivery arm was fitted to the vehicles.

[PerthBox]

7 hours ago, David Murray-Smith said:

An interesting point of detail is that the working back from Kittybrewster always involved the locomotive (still facing north) propelling the postal coaches and I have never worked out why that was the case. That movement was always carried out at very slow speed with a lookout man hanging out of the window of the leading postal coach and communicating with the engine crew using hand signals. Unfortunately, I have no photographs of the postal coaches being propelled in that way.

I'm very surprised to find out that they propelled them through the two tunnels and, like you, can't imagine why that would be needed or desireable.

 

There was once a turntable at the north end of Aberdeen station next to the 'Geranum' siding but I don't know when it went out of use. The pit is still visible from Union Terrace Gardens.

[MarkC]

On 01/09/2022 at 16:50, The Johnster said:

The Cardiff-York TPO in the 80s had a cat, which would casually stroll up a few minutes before departure, be fed and petted all the way to York where he would detrain and wander off with equal nonchalence, to repeat the performance at York that evening for the return journey.  He knew when it was Saturday evening and the train did not run, and nobody ever knew what he got up to in the daytimes, but he would sleep most of the York-Cardiff leg, waking up around Hereford to demand breakfast.

Ah, that's where Skimbleshanks came from!

[The Johnster]

Pretty much, but I'm sure Shimbleshanks has plenty of other real railway antecedents as well, and that the York TPO cat was not unique, just one I happened to know about.  A TPO is a pretty good bet for an opportunist (and they are inveterate opportunists) cat; warm, regular workers to pet you, plenty of food and milk, and nice piles of mailbags in dark corners to lie down on.  Cats, like most domesticated animals (though in this case it could be argued that it is they that have domseticated us) adapt well to routine, and the York TPO cat knew the departure and running times and would become every bit as fractious as the Royal Mail travelling inspector if the train was delayed. 

Edited March 7, 2023 by The Johnster

[phil-b259]

On 06/03/2023 at 20:17, Michael Hodgson said:

Given that the gangway was usually offset.....

 

Its worth remembering that the 'offset gangway' only applied to vehicles built by the Big 4 (and their Predecessors)

 

The British Railways Mk1 postal vehicles (some of which were equipped with the automatic pick up / set down apparatus) all had the standard Br Mk1 'Pullman' style gangway centrally positioned as per all other BR built gangwayed stock.

 

As such turning individual Br built vehicles wouldn't have been a problem (though I believe all the BR mail stock so equipped had two sets of apparatus - one on each side)

 

Naturally this precluded mixed rakes of BR and B4 / PG mail stock being seen on the same train 

[keefer]

Some 'high-security' TPO vehicles were converted/rebuilt from Mk1 BSK.

Dia.724 had normal Pullman gangways but dia.725 had offset BS gangways (for use with existing pre-nat stock)

 

[Michael Hodgson]

In what respect was it high security? 

 

It doesn't look any more secure than any other TPO if the threat is from villains who might be hanging about on platforms, and because of the gangway it doesn't provide any physical protection from any unauthorised (=lower grade?) sorting staff further along the train.

 

So does it refer to using the "working enclosures" to sort registered letters which might be assumed to carry items of high value?  Would such staff be locked into their enclosures ?

[Pacific231G]

Were the British Isles and North America the only places where bags were picked up and dropped on the move?

I don't think the French TPOs had such a facility but towns there are much further apart (but so are they in America) so there may have been less need. I don't though know about other countries.

Most non-commuter American passenger trains had some kind of railway post office facility, sometimes just a bag store in a combine and it seems to have been the move by the US Mail away from these to aircraft and trucks that finished off the majority of passenger trains that were getting much if not most of their revenue from postal contracts.  

[keefer]

13 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

So does it refer to using the "working enclosures" to sort registered letters which might be assumed to carry items of high value?  Would such staff be locked into their enclosures?

Possibly staff could lock themselves in to, as you suggest, work with important/high value items?

From the layout, said staff can move between the various compartments without leaving the 'secure' area. Note also the radio compartment.

Parkin Mk1 book does not elaborate on the 'high security' aspect but states these offset-gangway vehicles were converted to work with pre-nat stock on the Newcastle-Bristol service (and were not converted to standard gangways until early 1973).

It was due to the inflexibility of the offset-gangway design that the Mk1 coaches received normal gangways - they were introduced in batches so that they formed comlpete sets - though why the converted dia.724/725 were still needed for the Newcastle-Bristol is not explained.

[Wheatley]

13 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

In what respect was it high security? 

Small windows not large enough to climb through (in common with all post-GTR batches), the cages and provision for radio.