LMS Postal trains query

[ianwales]

According to the Jenkinson/Essery LMS Coaching books, the LMS didn't build any TPO coaches with a guards compartment until 1950, so where did the guard travel on these trains, I know the GWR adapted a few full brakes with an offset gangway at one end to match the TPO coaches, but, I can't find anything aboout the LMS doing similar?

 

Ian

[Michael Hodgson]

I don't see why the guard would need access to the TPO, except on the platform to establish that they had completed station duties and he could give the right away.

He worked for the LMS, the GPO looked after sorting the mail etc.

[Compound2632]

On 08/11/2023 at 12:45, ianwales said:

According to the Jenkinson/Essery LMS Coaching books, the LMS didn't build any TPO coaches with a guards compartment until 1950, so where did the guard travel on these trains, I know the GWR adapted a few full brakes with an offset gangway at one end to match the TPO coaches, but, I can't find anything aboout the LMS doing similar?

 

Don't forget that LMS TPO trains were not composed exclusively of LMS-built TPOs - there were a good number of ex-LNWR and ex-MR vehicles that remained in service throughout the Grouping period and into BR days. Not that any of those had guard's compartments, to my knowledge. 

 

Some of the TPOs also conveyed parcels vehicles in which no sorting was done, loaded with roughly pre-sorted parcels and letter bags and dealt with at station stops; many of these will have been 50 ft passenger brake vans, in one of which the guard could ride. 

 

On the Bristol-Newcastle and St Pancras-Newcastle TPOs, and the Lincoln-Tamworth TPO (i.e. all the Midland Division TPOs) the post office vehicles ran attached passenger trains, so the guard would be in his usual van. (I expect the same was true of some of the Western and Scottish Division TPOs too.)  

 

The true pedant would point out that the 1950 vehicles you mention were not built by the LMS but by BR(LMR), presumably designed after 1947 too, but by the staff of the former LMS C&W Drawing Office.