Railroad Mail Car Interior #10628

The Story

The restored interior of the L&N mail car on display at Steamtown in Scranton, PA. Built in 1914, this car operated as a Railway Post Office (RPO) and is an example of a first-generation steel-body RPO car. It sits as an exhibit in the protected roundhouse area. Ttourists can enter and walk through this sixty-foot car.

Before today’s ubiquitous telephone and the everyday common tweets, texts, and emails became the best way to communicate with each other, people communicated using written correspondence – letters, postcards, and such. The Post Office employed thousands to help sort and move all this mail, and the Railway Mail Service was significant in getting the job done from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Passenger trains usually had an RPO in the train consist for gathering and sorting mail while moving between the train’s starts and stops. Railroads made a good income from pulling the RPOs on a regular schedule, and felt a big financial hit when the government stopped moving the mail by train.

In this view, we see the mail sorting slots, the canvas mail bags hanging in the metal frames, and the fold-up wooden sorting tables. I’m assuming the cages above the barred windows were for small packages. Postal employees manned the car, sorting mail as the train traveled. The large canvas mail bags were often picked up and set out by mechanical means as the train moved. Working in the RPO railroad car was a lot of manual and physical work, done by many for a livelihood back in the day.

Location: Steamtown in Scranton, Pennsylvania.  © Andrew Dierks