In April 2011, an urban exploration group called the "Consolidation Crew" published accounts of illicit access to the tunnels. Detailed photography and text revealed that the railway is still largely in good condition, despite some natural decay. [14] [15] More recently, media have been admitted to the tunnels as part of the pre-launch publicity for the Postal Museum. Photographs show much of the infrastructure in place. [16] Mr Thompson wants Royal Mail to roll out seven-day parcel deliveries nationwide after a successful trial.

Bringing little ones? For an added fee, you can take the experience further in the Sorted! play area. This is a fantastic, imaginative play area featuring a mini town where kids can post letters, sort mail and let off some steam. It’s pretty adorable stuff.For the permanent exhibition, Mail by Rail, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum re-created a railway mail train in its Atrium. The interior fixtures are from a de-commissioned mail car. The exterior portion of the Railway Post Office train was created by Smithsonian artisans. [2] Operating divisions – 1950 [ edit ] a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y Foster, Stefanie (5 February 2014). "Mail by rail - still". railmagazine.com. In 1958, Coras Iompair Eireann built four modern TPOs for Department of Posts and Telegraphs at their Inchicore Works. Some time before their withdrawal it had been decided that two would be dedicated to use on the Cork Mail and two to the Galway Mail, both of which originated from Connolly station in Dublin. [16] The movement of post by rail in Ireland ended in 1994 with the last day mails on 14 January and the final operational night mails on 17 January on both the Cork and Galway routes. [15] [16] a b "Final delivery for Mail Rail". This Is Local London. 30 May 2003. Archived from the original on 5 July 2009 . Retrieved 19 August 2009. Johnson admits in the Introduction to the new book that a lot of the material has been seen in his previous books. I haven’t read his 1995 book, also called Mail by Rail, but I do have a copy of his 2009 An Illustrated History of the Travelling Post Offices. The first noticeable difference between this latest book and the 2009 one is that the new book benefits significantly from the availability of old newspapers via the British Newspaper Archive. Johnson now cites many newspapers to illustrate his points.

The book is recommended to anyone who collects items of postal history that were carried and sorted by rail. And yet, even without the TPO, mail traffic is still being carried up and down Britain’s rail network today. Solon, Olivia (14 March 2014). "Ride London's abandoned underground 'Mail Rail' ". Wired UK . Retrieved 8 June 2014.Carr, Clark E. The Railway Mail Service, Its Origin and Development, (A.C. McClurg & Co., 1909) online Milner, Chris, ed. (October 2018). "Rail Mail's first year of success". The Railway Magazine. Vol.164, no.1, 411. Horncastle: Mortons Media. p.10. ISSN 0033-8923.

Following the nationalisation of the railways and the formation of British Rail (BR) in the late 1940s, TPOs continued to be operated by this new state-owned company. However, it was during the BR era that the transportation of mail by rail acquired a negative reputation for unreliability due to services frequently experiencing delays, typically resulting in late arrivals. [1] London Assembly's Public Services Committee. "The future of Mail Rail" (PDF). Greater London Assembly. The railways make an appearance in Adrian Tchaikovsky's 2020 novel The Doors of Eden as Khan and Lee are being led by Stig towards a door to escape from pursuit by Rove's henchmen. The TPOs are probably the best known of the ‘mail by rail’ services. They ran for almost exactly 166 years, from January 20 1838 until January 9 2004.b) The history of the apparatus used to exchange bags with ground staff whilst the train is travelling at speed. I was intrigued to read that a live kitten was sent in a box by mail (along with a bottle of milk with a tube through the cork) and had experienced the jolt of the exchange. Poor mite! Ninth Division: Michigan, also lines of New York Central Railroad between New York City and Chicago. Headquarters: Cleveland. Berg, I. W. S. (October 1981). "The Post Office Railway". The Post Office Electrical Engineers' Journal. 74 (3): 280–281 . Retrieved 27 February 2021. Mew, G. M. (1964). "Paper 3: The Post Office Railway". Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Conference Proceedings. 179 (1964): 39–56. doi: 10.1243/PIME_CONF_1964_179_009_02. Andrew Murray (2001), Off the rails: Britain's great rail crisis: cause, consequences and cure, Verso, "Companies in trouble", pp. 124–129, ISBN 9781859846407

What happened to the TPOs?". British Postal Museum & Archive. Archived from the original on 12 May 2012 . Retrieved 7 January 2014.See and hear the people who worked on it, experience their lives below ground and glimpse hidden parts of the railway that once kept the mail coursing through London for 22 hours every day. Having written a brilliant series of books on narrow gauge railways in Wales, Peter Johnson now turns his attention to how the Post Office and the railways came together from the very early days of the railways right up to date. This fascinating book certainly opened the eyes of this reviewer who also enjoyed the section on the Post Office (London) Underground Railway which like the rest of the book is well illustrated. Highly recommended. Peter A. Harding - Branch Line & Light railway Publications. In October 2013, the British Postal Museum & Archive announced that it intended opening part of the network to the public. [18] [19] After approval was granted by Islington Council, work on the new museum and the railway began in 2014. [20] Special tourist trains were installed in late 2016. It was planned to open a circular route, running beneath the depot at Mount Pleasant with a journey time of around 15 minutes, by mid-2017. [21] [22] [23] The museum opened on 5 September. [24] The Post Office (London) Railway". The Post Office Electrical Engineers' Journal. 21 (2): 147–154. July 1928.