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In the United States a railway post office, commonly abbreviated as '''RPO''', was a Railroad car that was normally operated in passenger service as a means to sort Mail en route, in order to speed delivery. The RPO was staffed by highly trained Railway Mail Service postal clerks, and was off-limits to the passengers on the Train . HISTORY The first ever sorting of mail en route ocurred in the United Kingdom with the introduction of the Travelling Post Office in 1838. In the U.S.A. it was introduced in 1862 between Hannibal, Missouri , and St. Joseph, Missouri . Its purpose was to separate mail for connection with a westbound stage departing soon after the train's arrival at St. Joseph. This service lasted approximately one year. The first permanent Railway Post Office route was established on August 28, 1864, between Chicago, Illinois , and Clinton, Iowa . This service is distinguished from the 1862 operation because mail was sorted to and received from each post office along the route, as well as major post offices beyond the route's end-points. By the 1880s, railway post office routes were operating on the vast majority of Passenger Train s in the United States. A complex network of interconnected routes allowed mail to be transported and delivered in a remarkably short time. Railway mail clerks were subjected to stringent training and ongoing testing of details regarding their handling of the mail. On a given RPO route, each clerk was expected to know not only the post offices and rail junctions along the route, but also specific local delivery details within each of the larger cities served by the route. Periodic testing demanded both accuracy and speed in sorting mail, and a clerk scoring ''only'' 96% accuracy would likely receive a warning from the Railway Mail Service division superintendent. In the United States , RPO cars (also known as ''mail cars'' or ''postal'' cars) were equipped and staffed to handle most back-end postal processing functions. First class mail, magazines and newspapers were all sorted, cancelled when necessary, and dispatched to post offices in towns along the route. Registered mail was also handled, and the foreman in charge was required to carry a regulation pistol while on duty, to discourage theft of the mail. |
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