The100 Years of the Railway is PostComing! Office in

DAVID A. THOMPSON ’ve always loved fast pas- Railway Post Offices were the primary proposed a more comprehensive senger . I can remember way that Americans communicated system of en-​route mail distribution, the excitement of 60 years ago, via letters, learned what was going “putting the on wheels.” Ias an eight-​year-​old boy, standing on on in the country via newspapers He approached officials of the Chi- the platform in Duluth and magazines, ordered and received cago & North Western Railroad who, as the morning from goods, received money, and paid bills. according to an ad published years pulled in amidst swirling locomotive RPOs also supported commerce, car- later, “saw its possibilities . . . on smoke and steam. In the doorway rying cash to banks and businesses August 28th, a rebuilt car of the Duluth & Altoona Railway Post across the nation. made the initial ‘post office’ run -be Office railway mail car was my dad, history started tween Chicago and Clinton, .”4 waving at me. He wore a railroader’s with the desire to speed mail delivery. This was the birth of the RPO, which cap and overalls and a gun at his hip, On July 7, 1838, Congress declared all not only carried mail from point to to guard the mail. I remember look- railroads to be post roads and enabled point along a route, as the DPO and ing at the clerks in that car and think- the railways to make contracts as long its route agents did, but soon sorted ing: “These guys really know how to as sending mail by rail cost no more and bagged letters going in different live a life of adventure on the rails.” than 25 percent above transporting it directions, to be forwarded on con- Several generations of Minneso- by stagecoach.2 Before that, the necting trains to its final destination. tans know nothing of the excitement had traveled designated post routes Railway Post Offices were just like reg- of seeing a train, with its railway mail on horse-​drawn wagons, stages, and ular U.S. post offices, and RPO clerks car, coming over the horizon, bearing riverboats. were federal employees of the Railway passengers and the morning mail. Few today remember the sights and sounds of a steam engine, belching smoke and steam, screeching to a halt For 100 years, before the internet in the center of town. It was the high and social media, Railway Post point of the day for many Minneso- Offices were the primary way that tans as the mail train came to town, Americans communicated. bringing news and letters from far- away places. Configured like a post office to receive, sort, and dispatch mail, rail- Trains soon began carrying mail Mail Service (in 1949 renamed the way mail cars ran as part of passenger and, by 1840, U.S. postal clerks were Postal Transportation Service). trains on specific routes that were assigned by Distributing Post Offices In Mail by Rail, historians Bryant the responsibility of the Railway Post (DPOs, part of the U.S. mail service) to Long and William Dennis described Office (RPO). Named for the route be route agents. They rode the trains the initial RPO: “Letter cases [banks from point of origin to destination as post office employees, in a mail-​ of pigeonholes, often for an entire (for example, Duluth to Altoona, carriage car or a designated section state] with seventy-​seven boxes were ), they served all towns and of a baggage car, dropping off and borrowed from the Chicago Distrib- post offices on the railroad right-of-​ ​ picking up pouches of mail from local uting Post Office and installed at way in between.1 post offices at each stop. Route agents angles. The car was about forty feet Little did I realize how important opened those pouches, sorted and put long, with two windows, upper deck the Railway Post Office was in con- into pouches the mail for other points lights, oil lamps, and no end doors. necting Minnesotans to the rest of on the line, and sent the rest to Distrib- . . . Mail was worked with surprising the world. For 100 years (1871–1971), uting Post Offices for further sorting.3 ease and efficiency,” though the trip before the internet and social media, In 1864 George B. Armstrong, an was “rather rough.”5 Evolving from assistant DPO postmaster, formally this beginning was a well-​coordinated facing: Soo Line train #5, steaming out of and bound for Chicago, October 1952. The Railway Post Office car, right behind DAVID THOMPSON, a freelance writer and amateur Railway Post Office historian from the engine and coal tender, is an old 1916 Rosemount, Minnesota, is the son of Arne Thompson, an RPO foreman who worked on six steel model; the route is the Owen (WI) & routes in Minnesota from 1945 to 1962. Minneapolis.

SPRING 2015 207 system of trains that intersected from that Kittson County town to cars, nationwide. In 1915 some 20,000 with other trains to bring the mail to Canada in August 1881.10 DPO route RPO clerks covered 216,000 route almost every city, town, village, and agents staffed these early routes. miles in 4,000 mail cars.12 rural community in the country. In little over a decade, the vol- By 1920, according to geographer After the Civil War, railroads ex- ume of RPO business in Minnesota John Borchert, “91 percent of all panded westward. By the 1880s the increased dramatically. For example, business and personal communica- Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Rail- ’s Ransom County Inde- tion moved by railway mail, while road (), the Chicago, pendent reported in 1898 telegraph and telephone accounted St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Rail- for less than 10 percent.” Minnesota road, and the Chicago, Burlington & Mail messenger W. R. Hennessey had become a critical transcontinen- Quincy Railroad had all reached the is the oldest postal clerk on the tal hub, and Twin Cities. Three others emerged in Soo Line. He informs . . . [us] that Division 10 (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Minnesota in the last half of the nine- eleven years ago . . . he took the and North and ), head- teenth century: the Northern Pacific, first mail car out of St. Paul on the quartered in St. Paul, “was the leader the Minneapolis, Sault Ste. Marie and Soo Line west and on that occa- in both the number of RPOs in the Atlantic (Soo Line), and the Great sion he had one package of about U.S. (11.5 percent) and miles of RPOs Northern. The NP and GN completed twenty letters on the car. Last Fri- (11 percent). Furthermore, Borchert transcontinental connections to the day morning he left St. Paul on the stated, Minnesota’s 76 RPO routes (27 Pacific Northwest in 1888 and 1893, same trip with 86 sacks of papers mainline ones radiating out of the respectively.6 and 225 packages of letters. This Twin Cities and 49 branch lines con- As these mainline railroads de- is a remarkable increase in the necting to them in-​state) linked “the veloped, branch lines sprang up, first postal business and is an evidence upper Midwest with the rest of the reaching north from the Twin Cities of the rapid development of this country and Canada [and] moved the to Duluth to link up with the Northern great northwest country.11 mail among 1,200 post offices within Pacific and its westbound trains. Du- the state.”13 luth’s first railroad, the Lake Superior At the end of the nineteenth century, The Milwaukee Road, Great & , was completed in 1871; there were 3,200 RPO clerks running Northern, Northern Pacific, Chicago by 1926, there were eight more.7 Soon, on 90,000 route miles in 1,900 mail & North Western, and Soo Line were, trains were stretching south toward City and Omaha and west toward Fargo and Grand Forks. They passed through almost every settle- ment in Minnesota, providing an ex- cellent vehicle for delivering the mail. Minnesota’s first Railway Post Office was the Milwaukee Road’s Milwaukee & St. Paul RPO (Novem- ber 1871). Next came the Chicago & North Western’s Elroy & Winona RPO (August 1882) and the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy’s Chicago & Min- neapolis RPO (August 1883).8 Originat- ing in the Twin Cities and traveling westward, the Minneapolis & Pacific Railroad’s mail service to Fairmont, Minnesota, began in March 1887.9 The state’s first international RPO, the St. Vincent & Winnipeg, initiated service

Duluth’s first Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad depot, 1872

208 MINNESOTA HISTORY Museum’s website outlines some of the dangers.

Items within the mail car itself could rip loose in a wreck, strik- ing or trapping a clerk inside the car. Gallons of scalding water could pour into the railway post office car from a jolted steam-​ driven engine. Inside the mail car itself, oil-​burning lamps and wood-​burning stoves proved to be extremely hazardous. Wooden cars were commonly used in railway service during this period. These cars were especially susceptible to destruction by fire Busy rail yards at St. Paul’s Union Depot, 1920s and impact.16 in that order, the largest mail carriers pation too risky to insure. Between in Minnesota in 1920. In 1926, at the 1875 and 1916, 316 clerks were killed Bitter protests emerged over height of RPO service in the state, St. and nearly 11,000 injured, accord- filthy or unsafe mail cars. For exam- Paul’s Union Depot was the center of ing to historian Bill Bursack. The ple, clerks reported in 1910 that one much activity: 149 trains moved in Postmaster General in 1884 received wooden car’s catcher arm, used to and out daily.14 Most of these passen- a 14-​page report of RPO accidents, grab a from a crane as the ger trains had railway mail cars. including: “Mail car was completely train sped past, was partially torn out destroyed”; “was fatally injured and of the rotten wall. A serious hazard died the next morning”; “was badly to anyone using it, the arm remained n the early days, working in injured and died on December 2”; unfixed for three years despite mul- the Railway Mail Service cars “neck was broken, killing instantly”; tiple protests from RPO crews and was both dangerous and dif- “was caught in wreck and burned to foremen. Clerks reporting such con- Ificult. Since civil-service​ employees death”; “so badly crushed as to be un- ditions were told to “quit being so could not form unions to address recognizable.”15 The National Postal fussy,” according to Long and Dennis. grievances in the nineteenth and early-​twentieth centuries, little could be done to correct dangerous working conditions. On November 18, 1874, RPO clerks formed the Railway Mail Mutual Benefit Association (after 1904, the Railway Mail Association or RMA) to offer life insurance to workers and raise money for widows of those killed in the line of duty, as standard companies found the occu-

Wrecked wooden RPO car, Wheeling & Lake , Zoar, , 1913; X marks the spot where a clerk’s body was found. The accompanying 1914 report notes that the car “while in very good condition . . . was not built to withstand the shock of the wreck,” espe- cially given its position between the engine and much heavier cars.

SPRING 2015 209 RPO lines were terribly understaffed; some crews were unable to complete sorting the mail (“going stuck”) due By the mid-​1950s the famed to lack of manpower or neophytes just Western Star and learning their jobs. Morale was lowest passenger trains frequently in the winter of 1910–11, when labor carried mail-​storage cars. shortages meant Christmas mail was unworked for days and a crash killed four clerks in a car that had been in- spected and found to be “safe.”17 spurred the RMS to unionize and join ried five cars loaded with mail bound Twelve RPO clerks on the Chicago the American Federation of Labor in for the Pacific Northwest and also & North Western’s Tracy (MN) & 1917 to fight for improved safety and handled the majority of first-​class Pierre (SD) RPO got the attention of working conditions as well as better mail for Chicago, Milwaukee, and Congress. In 1911 these men of RMS pay and benefits. This was the nation’s Minneapolis. After 1889 these trains Division 10 went on an unauthorized first federal civil-​service union.19 made the Chicago-​to-​Twin Cities run strike for better working conditions. in 9 hours and 15 minutes with many During the strike, as Bursack noted, 20-​to-​30-​minute stops in between. “Unsorted mail rode up and down the n the latter part of the William Stauss, a Milwaukee Road line for days and amassed on depot nineteenth century and early historian, commented that business platforms.” Wide press coverage in into the twentieth, unique grew so much that “consists averaged the Upper Midwest and pressure from Itrains consisting mainly of RPO cars 15 to 24 cars and often swelled to as the public and the Minnesota and and express-​mail storage cars, with many as 32.”20 South Dakota legislatures finally mo- only a few passenger cars in their The Great Northern’s fast-​mail tivated Congress to act. On March 4, consists, raced across train, #27, began service in October 1911, it moved to make mail cars safer, from coast to coast at full throttle 1909. It quickly became the principal mandating railroads to build all-​steel with all green lights. Railway mail westbound mail train on the northern RPO cars and retire the wooden ones cars on regular passenger trains were plains, capable of running from St. by July 1, 1916. The strike ended the one thing, but these trains were the Paul to in 47.25 hours. This day the law was passed.18 greyhounds of the system. The Mil- train had priority over all passen- Congress went on to pass the waukee Road and Great Northern ran ger and freight traffic on the tracks. Lloyd-​La Follette Act of 1912, which this service in Minnesota; their spe- But before it could leave St. Paul on nullified President Theodore Roose­ cial trains were called the fast mail. schedule at 8:45 a.m., it had to re- velt’s executive order of 1900: the The Milwaukee Road initiated ceive the mail from the Milwaukee infamous gag rule that forbade federal fast-​mail service in Minnesota as part Road’s train from Chicago, which civil-​service employees from seeking of its Chicago & Minneapolis RPO in redress from their employer through March 1884. From the first day of op- Fast mail: Great Northern train #27, their congressmen. The 1911 strike by eration, train #55 (by 1889, trains #56 leaving St. Paul with 16 mail/express cars clerks in Minnesota—​and its results—​ and #57) between those two cities car- and 1 coach, early 1950s. first had to connect with Central’s fast mail from New York and . Waiting for the Milwaukee Road frequently delayed GN #27’s de- TIME TRAVEL parture; in 1931 it was late out of the station on 355 days but, because it was The last American RPO, the New York and , ceased operating almost 40 an express, rarely arrived late in Seat- years ago, but museums recapture some of the thrill of seeing the mail train roll tle. As Stuart Holmquist of the Great into town. Local, regional, and national organizations offer exhibits and even a Northern Railway Historical Society chance to ride the rails. pointed out: “When you consider these trains crossed two mountain Weekends from May to October, the Minnesota Transportation Museum runs an ranges and carried eight and fre- excursion train, including an RPO mail car, on the Osceola & St. Croix Valley quently ten or eleven cars, filled with Railway. The train departs Osceola, Wisconsin; see http://mtmuseum.org/?div=oscv. The museum itself, open year round, is housed in the Great Northern Railway’s mail and express, and in the winter historic Jackson Street Roundhouse in St. Paul. months operated at times under the worst kind of weather conditions, its RPO exhibits and mail cars are on view at: record for on-time​ performance on a fast schedule is most remarkable.”21 Lake Superior Railroad Museum Holmquist noted that in 1953 in Duluth’s historic Union Depot; www.lsrm.org/Home/expass.html. GN #27 contributed 44 percent of the railway’s total mail income; in Green Bay, Wisconsin; www.nationalrrmuseum.org/. December alone it carried “221 sixty-​ foot carloads of mail out of St. Paul Railway Museum . . . 26 percent of all mail shipped Union; www.irm.org/. out of St. Paul on all carriers.” At the Galesburg Railroad Museum same time, passenger traffic on the Illinois; www.galesburgrailroadmuseum.org/The%20RPO.html. Great Northern, as elsewhere, was de- State Railroad Museum creasing. By the mid-​1950s the famed Sacramento; www.csrmf.org/events-exhibits/railroad-​ car-​ favorites/great-​ northern​ Western Star and Empire Builder pas- -railway-​ post-​ office-​ car-​ no-​ 42.​ senger trains frequently carried mail-​ storage cars, too. In early 1960, the Orange Empire Railroad Museum GN’s fast mail and Western Star were Perris, California; www.oerm.org/collection/santa-fe/atsf-​ 60.​ merged, retaining the numbers 27 Smithsonian (westbound) and 28 (eastbound) but Washington, D.C.; postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/current/moving-the-​ mail/index.html.​ now called the Western Star.

New York & Chicago RPO ost RPOs in Minnesota did (New York Central Railroad), not run fast-​mail trains. In- 1950s–’60s vintage car stead, they usually had one Mmail car at the front of a passenger train, either mainline or branch line. Depending on volume, railway mail required different amounts of space and crews of varying size. Full-​sized, 60-foot​ mail cars had a six-​to-​ten-​ man crew; combination rail cars devoted 30 feet to the mail compart- ment and its three-​to-​five-​man crew, while the Railway Express Agency oc- cupied the other 30 feet. For smaller

SPRING 2015 211 runs, a 15-​foot compartment and one the tracks, using the catcher arm ex- Loading the contents of a U.S. Mail truck onto or two men sufficed; baggage and tended from the train car’s door. a pre-​1916 RPO car (probably Lehigh Valley, Railway Express occupied the remain- Most mail from the east came to ), about 1915 ing three-quarters​ of the car. Some Minnesota via Chicago on two large RPOs used several mail cars, however, RPOs. The largest mail hauler into partment, took on a new crew and depending on the number of trains or the state from the 1920s to 1971 was became the Elroy & Rapid City RPO, the number of mail cars attached to the Milwaukee Road’s Chicago & Min- traveling west through Winona and express-​mail trains on the route. For neapolis RPO (nicknamed the Chic Mankato to South Dakota.24 example, the Milwaukee Road by 1949 & Min or Minnie). It included two Mail between Canada and the U.S. had expanded its fleet of postal cars 60-​foot working mail cars and strings traveled through Minnesota, too. The to accommodate 12 RPO routes with of mail-​storage cars full of presorted Great Northern’s International carried 72 mail cars, 60 mail-and-​ ​express mail from eastern cities like New York mail to western Canada on the St. Paul cars, and 375 storage cars. Regardless, and Washington, D.C., heading to the & Noyes RPO, while the Soo Line had all railway mail cars were configured West Coast. It also carried second-​ the St. Paul & Portal RPO. Canadian to function like a post office: receiv- class mail, such as magazines and mail was routed from Winnipeg to ing, sorting, and dispatching mail to catalogs, from eastern publishing and Warroad, Minnesota, where it con- post offices on the route or passing advertising firms. “In that corridor,” nected with the Warroad & Duluth ongoing mail to an intersecting RPO Borchert stated, “the Minnie was RPO. At that destination, the Duluth that would carry it in a different ‘the leader,’ the fifth heaviest run in & Minneapolis RPO took appropriate direction.22 the U.S.” As early as 1911, 167 clerks mail to the Twin Cities and the Duluth Minnesotans saw at least one worked on that route.23 & Altoona RPO carried the other railway-​mail car on almost every The second major RPO route from mail onward, connecting with the passenger route in the state, either a Chicago to Minnesota was the Chicago eastbound Chicago & St. Paul RPO in local that stopped in every town along & St. Paul RPO that ran on the Chicago Altoona, Wisconsin, for the trip to the way or a streamlined train that & North Western to Elroy, Wisconsin. Chicago and points beyond. Duluth made few stops. In the latter case, the There, the train split; one-half,​ includ- also was a major RPO hub for mail to dispatching clerk tossed a pouch with ing the Chicago & St. Paul RPO with its northern Minnesota, with six RPOs.25 the town’s incoming mail from the 60-​foot mail car and crew, went north In addition, regional RPOs out moving car onto the station platform to St. Paul on the Chicago, St. Paul, of the Twin Cities connected with and then snagged the outgoing-​mail Minneapolis & Omaha Railroad. The transcontinental trains to the south pouch from the mail crane beside remainder, with a 30-foot​ mail com- and southwest: the Minneapolis &

212 MINNESOTA HISTORY left: Demonstration of how a clerk on a moving train retrieves a mail from a trackside mail crane, 1949. This Great Northern mail car is parked at St. Paul Union Depot. right: Four armed men, a typical crew for a branch line, working the mail; Chicago & Council Bluffs RPO on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, somewhere in Minnesota, 1948.

Sioux City RPO on the Chicago & kinds of weather, making the mail , Washington, and the Cana- North Western and the Minneapolis & car sometimes very hot or bitterly dian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatch- Omaha RPO on the Chicago & Great cold because the door was open for ewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Western routed mail down to the loading or catching mail on the fly. and western Ontario. Frank Scheer, Union Pacific’s and Southern Pacific’s Engine smoke and dust, kicked up curator of the Railway Mail Service westbound RPOs in . These by the moving cars, were things to Library, commented, “The general took domestic mail onward to Denver be endured. A good work ethic and statement I’ve heard . . . is that a good and California and international mail teamwork were expected of the crew, clerk was expected to know the distri- to for its Pacific Ocean with no one finishing until everyone bution for about 10,000 post offices.” crossing. The Minneapolis & Des was done. Midwestern routes with 60-​foot mail Moines RPO on the Rock Island Rail- Workers also had to be intelligent cars also required knowledge of dis- road carried mail bound for southern and diligent to do this job efficiently tant states. According to Scheer, “For states and Mexico as far south as and correctly. In order to determine a major route such as the CHI & MPLS Kansas City. the best connections for ongoing RPO, one clerk was working New York mail, RPO clerks had to memorize State mail . . . going East, and Califor- several routings for each of various nia mail on westbound runs.”26 he work of an RPO clerk destinations. They had to know all After 1887, clerks had to pass an was challenging. Men had post offices in multiple states and annual timed test, called a case exam, to be physically fit to handle the trains that serviced each one. For that evaluated their skill at routing Tloading and unloading heavy mail example, clerks traveling west out of mail in a timely, accurate fashion. sacks and pouches and to stand for St. Paul on the GN’s St. Paul & Willis- The test entailed arranging cards, a ten-​hour trip in a moving, sway- ton RPO had to know all of the towns averaging 16 per minute; the passing ing car. The trains traveled in all and RPOs in North and South Dakota, grade was 97 percent correctly routed.

SPRING 2015 213 All the thieves were apprehended and most of the money was recovered, but an estimated $100,000 is still unac- counted for.29 The other vital RPO role involved mass communication and mail-​order commerce. Before TV, many people read several newspapers and a variety of periodicals for news and enter- tainment. The Railway Mail Service delivered big-​city newspapers and magazines to these readers. Second-​ class mail sacks were loaded with periodicals and day-​old newspapers RPO practice and examination kit for The federal agency and military from larger cities. Clerks regularly Minnesota, about 1946 pouches—​which also included handled The Saturday Evening Post, diplomatic documents or classi- Look Magazine, Time, Newsweek, Popu- According to Long and Dennis, most fied information—​were secured lar Mechanics, Good Housekeeping, and clerks were “two or three times that with locks that many more magazines, which made fast,” scoring “at least 99 percent.”27 had keyings restricted to the up an increasingly larger percent- agency employees. Post Office age of the mail. The U.S. Post Office Department clerks could not website reports: “Between 1885 and side from first-​class mail, open those pouches but recorded 1915, to the dismay of postal officials, two major functions made them just as they did for all other second-​class mail volume increased the RPO an important part of registered mail. Large quantities by a factor of twelve, while first-​class AMinnesota history for 100 years. First: of currency, coin, postage stamps, mail volume grew only six-​ to seven- Money and the RPO went together. or negotiable bearer instruments fold. . . . Second-​class mail volume Few Minnesotans were aware of all such as bonds and stock certifi- continued to rise, from 1.2 billion the money and securities that RPOs cates were in locked pouches.28 pounds in 1918, to 1.6 billion pounds regularly carried through their towns, in 1928, to 1.4 billion pounds [sic] in requiring the clerks to be armed. No wonder the clerks carried guns 1938, to 2.1 billion pounds in 1948.”30 Long before the days of automatic to protect the mail from robbers like In rural America in the 1940s deposits and credit cards, people were Jesse James and those that followed. and ’50s there was no Macy’s close paid with cash in an ; there was no such thing as transferring money electronically from employer to employee. RPOs served for many Few Minnesotans were aware of all years as the sole means for banks—​ the money and securities that RPOs including the Federal Reserve—​to regularly carried through their towns, transfer money, checks, stocks, and requiring the clerks to be armed. bonds, helping companies and the U.S. government pay their workers promptly, regardless of where they lived. According to Scheer: The greatest train robbery in the U.S. by, no Target or Wal-​Mart. Almost happened in 1924 on a Minneapolis-​ everything purchased—clothes,​ ap- Currency and coin were handled bound train, the Chicago & Minneap- pliances, toys, sporting goods, house- as registered mail in Railway olis RPO, at Rondout, Illinois, north hold items, seeds, farm implements, Post Offices. Some were transfers of Chicago. Robbers stopped the hardware, and firearms (sent by between Federal Reserve Banks Milwaukee Road train and stole ap- parcel post or freight)—​was selected while others were government, proximately $3 million in cash and from catalogs that arrived in the mail. military, or civilian payrolls. securities (about $36 million today). From 1908 to 1940 people could even

214 MINNESOTA HISTORY Clerks loading mail onto a Milwaukee Road RPO car, St. Paul Union Depot, 1949 order prefabricated homes from Sears were filled, parcels. The majority of no need for RPO clerks. Mail could go Roebuck & Company; the building Christmas presents each year did not long distances by air faster than by materials were shipped to them by come by Santa’s sleigh but by an RPO train and shorter distances by truck to freight car.31 or the fast mail passing through town. places trains no longer traveled. Every spring, many branch-line​ In 1930 more than 10,000 trains RPOs, which stopped at all small had moved the mail into every city, towns on the right-​of-​way, delivered echnological change, town, and village in the nation. The baby chickens to the many country which had given birth to the Transportation Act of 1958, which folk who raised a few birds for meat Railway Post Office system, granted the Interstate Commerce and eggs. Seed companies sent free Talso rang its death knell. Railroads Commission money to bolster the chicks, packed in big, flat boxes with wanted to get out of the uneconom- nation’s ailing railroad passenger ser- air holes, to potential seed customers, ical passenger-​train business as vice, failed to achieve that goal, and knowing they could sell chicken feed ridership dwindled in the 1950s due mail-​carrying passenger trains de- to the same people later on.32 to automobile travel on the new in- clined rapidly. By 1965 only 190 trains I remember my RPO-clerk​ dad terstate highways. By the 1960s the carried mail, and five years later the commenting on the sheer number of Post Office Department could move railroads hauled almost no first-​class second-class-​ ​mail sacks full of Christ- mail more efficiently and effectively mail. On April 30, 1971, the Post Office mas catalogs from Sears Roebuck and after the invention of the Department eliminated seven of the Montgomery Ward, stacked to the (1963) and automated machines that surviving RPOs, including Minneso- roof of his mail car around September sorted faster than any human. The ta’s last two: the Great Northern’s St. of each year. As orders were placed, post began to be handled in large Paul & Williston, and the Northern RPO clerks first saw a steady increase mail-​distribution centers and sent Pacific’s St. Paul & Miles City. When in mail-​order letters and then, as to its destination by air or truck in the last American RPO, the New York Christmas approached and orders presorted pouches or , with & Washington on the Penn Central/​

SPRING 2015 215 Conrail Railroad, was terminated on Railway?” http://gnrhs.org/gn_history.htm. 22. Stauss, “Fast Mail,” 5. June 30, 1977, 113 years of Railway Though the NP was granted a charter in 1864, 23. Borchert, “Heyday of the RPO,” 22. the first miles of track opened years later. 24. Ron Albers and Joe Follmar, “Railway Mail Service operations came to a 7. “Duluth’s Major Railroads,” http://zenithcity Post Office Service on North Western Lines,” close.33 .com/zenith-city-​ history-​ archives/duluth-​ parks​ North Western Lines 16 (Winter 1989): 36. Now the RPOs are but a fading -landmarks/duluths-​ major-​ railroads/.​ 25. Here and below, Borchert, “Heyday of the 8. John L. Kay, Directory of Railway Post Offices, RPO,” 25–28. memory. The network was America’s 1964 to 1977 (Contoo Creek, NH: Mobile Post 26. Holmquist, “Great Northern Railway first information highway, facilitating Office Society, 1985); data from this source Mail Services,” 15; Frank Scheer, email to author, commerce, finance, and communica- emailed to author by Dr. Frank Scheer, curator May 5, 2014. To learn how a letter traveling tion. It bound Minnesotans together of the Railway Mail Service Library, Boyce, VA, across the country was handled in 1947, see May 12, 2014. David A. Thompson, “Boston—​Seattle for 3¢,” for 100 years, as it did the nation for a 9. “Report of the Minneapolis & Pacific Rail- Classic Trains, Fall 2006, 70–72. slightly longer time. And everywhere, way to the Board of Railroad and Warehouse 27. Long and Dennis, Mail by Rail, 58. Scheer it was a sight to see and a welcome Commissioners of Minnesota for the Year Ending email, May 5, 2014: “My understanding is that June 30, 1887,” emailed to author by Alton B. exams started after the Railway Mail Service sound to hear the mail coming to Chermak, Soo Line Historical & Technical Soci- began publishing state general schemes during town. ety, Apr. 16, 2013. The Minneapolis & Pacific was the 1880s. Prior to 1877, Railway Mail Clerks had the predecessor of the Soo Line west of Minne- to compile their own information about sched- apolis. ules and mail distribution. That may seem disor- 10. Catalogue of Canadian Cancellations & ganized to us now, but in the early years there Related Railway Including Selected were fewer routes and not as many post offices.” Notes Waterway Postmarks (Halifax, Canada: British 28. Frank Scheer, email to author, Mar. 10, North American Philatelic Society, 2009), 236. 2014. 1. Cancellations on stamped letters received 11. Ransom County Independent, Mar. 17, 1898, 29. Kathleen Stone, “The Rondout Train Rob- and processed by an RPO would include the quoted in Chermak email. bery,” Chicago Historic Living Examiner, www route name, the train number, a date stamp, and 12. Bill Bursack, “Remembering the RPO,” .examiner.com/article/the-rondout-​ train-​ robbery.​ a note specifying which mail car (there could be The Mainstreeter: The 30. “Postage Rates for Periodicals: A Narra- several) had processed the letter. Historical Association 16 (Winter 1997): 6. tive History,” http://about.usps.com/who-we-​ are​ 2. Bryant A. Long and William J. Dennis, Mail 13. John R. Borchert, “The Heyday of the Rail- /postal-history/periodicals-​ postage-​ history.htm.​ by Rail: The Story of the Postal Transportation Ser- way Post Office in Minnesota,” Minnesota Trans- 31. Mark R. Wilson, “Mail Order,” www vice (New York: Simmons-​Boardman, 1951), 98. portation Museum Minnegazette, Winter 1997, 19, .encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/779.html; 3. U.S. Post Office Department, History of the 21, 24–27. Sears Archives, “What is a Sears Modern Home?” Railway Mail Service; A Chapter in the History of 14. Borchert, “Heyday of the RPO,” 19; St. www.searsarchives.com/homes/index.htm. The Postal Affairs in the (Washington, Paul Press, May 8, 2014, 7A. company’s mail-order​ Modern Homes program D.C.: Government Office, 1885), 41. 15. Long and Dennis, Mail by Rail, 138–40, sold some 70,000–75,000 houses in 447 differ- 4. Advertisement, North Western Lines 16 143; Bursack, “Remembering the RPO,” 8. The ent styles, ranging from the elaborate multistory (Winter 1989): 35. Railway Mail Association evolved from three Ivanhoe, with its elegant French doors and art-​ 5. Long and Dennis, Mail by Rail, 112 (quote), nineteenth-​century benefit associations, two of glass windows, to the simpler Goldenrod, a 370. Letter cases, usually for an entire state, them crushed in labor conflict. In 1949 the RMA three-​room, no-​bath vacation cottage. (An out- were 10 to 11 pigeonholes high and 4 to 12 wide; changed its name to the National Postal Trans- house could be purchased separately.) holes were 3 to 4 inches by 4.5 inches wide. The portation Association when the Railway Mail Ser- 32. To read or hear an RPO clerk’s testimony case headers (cards) that labeled each hole were vice became the Postal Transportation Service. on shipping chicks, see Smithsonian National arranged in the order of locations along the 16. National Postal Museum, “Wrecks,” www Postal Museum, “Railway Mail Service: Expansion route. When a pigeonhole was full, the sorted .postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibits/2c1c_wrecks.html. and Turmoil, 1876–1920,” http://postalmuseum mail was wrapped, tied with twine, and tossed in 17. Long and Dennis, Mail by Rail, 145, 147. .si.edu/RMS/history/expansion.html#_edn4. A 1956 a for that town/post office or con- 18. Bursack, “Remembering the RPO,” 6 post office training video, Men and Mail in Motion necting train—and​ the process resumed. (quote); Long and Dennis, Mail by Rail, 149. (youtube.com), includes 16 seconds on handling 6. On the railroads, see: Milwaukee Road His- 19. Long and Dennis, Mail by Rail, 151–52; for this “fragile cargo.” torical Assn., “The Milwaukee Road: Four Gener- more on unionization, see 140–68. The gag rule 33. “The Post Office Role in U.S. Develop- ations,” http://oldmilwaukeeroad.com/content threatened reduction in rank and compensation ment: The Railway Mail Service,” http://inventors /fourgen/page08.html; Chicago & North Western or dismissal without a hearing if federal employ- .about.com/library/inventors/blmailus2c.htm. Historical Society, “Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapo- ees complained to their congressmen about lis & Omaha—​A Capsule History,” www.cnwhs working conditions or benefits. .org/ch_spmo.htm; Burlington Route Historical 20. William F. Stauss, “The Fast Mail,” The The photo on p. 206 is courtesy Stuart J. Nelson; Society, “Information about the Chicago, Burl- Milwaukee Railroader, June 1989, 5–6. p. 209, bottom, Railway Mail Service files, ington & Quincy Railroad,” http://burlingtonroute 21. Here and below, Stuart Holmquist, “Great National Postal Museum Library, Smithsonian .com/cbq.html; Northern Pacific Railway, “First of Northern Railway Mail Services,” Great Northern Institution; p. 210, Classic Trains Magazine, the Northern Continentals—​Chronology,” http:// Railway Historical Society, Reference Sheet 177, Fall 2006; p. 211 and 212, Railway Mail Service pw2.netcom.com/~whstlpnk/first.html; “Northern June 1991, 10–12 (available to GNHS members or Library, Boyce, VA; and p. 213, right, BNSF Rail- Pacific Railway: Main Street of the Northwest,” for sale on the GNHS website). From the 1920s way. All other images are in MNHS collections. www.american-rails.com/northern-​ pacific-​ railway​ into the 1960s, the GN’s fast mail carried the larg- .html; “A 100-​Year Timeline History of the Soo est volume to the Pacific Northwest on the St. Line Railroad and its Predecessors,” Soo Liner Paul & Williston RPO. Through the 1950s, this RPO Magazine, May–June 1976, www.kohlin.com/soo used one 60-​foot mail car, 11 to 15 mail storage/ /soo-hist.htm​ ; “What was the Great Northern express cars, and two passenger coaches.

216 MINNESOTA HISTORY

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