Rail mail
The rail mail carried all kinds of mail regularly and according to schedule by rail in rail mail cars and post offices . The letters were sorted there during the journey. These were non-local post offices that performed the tasks of a post office. For a long time, rail mail was the fastest possible way and therefore the most important form of transporting mail beyond local borders. Almost all postal administrations in the world operated rail mail services.
history
The country of birth of the railway mail is England. Frederik Karstadt, the son of an English postal inspector, suggested in 1837 to the General Post Office that the mail on the trains should be processed while the train was in motion; this could save a lot of time. The General Post Office responded to the suggestion and already on January 6, 1838, had the first, poorly equipped, rail mail run between London and Birmingham in a carriage that was previously intended for horse transport. Since the experiment met expectations, the rail mail service was permanently set up on December 17, 1838 on the London – Birmingham route, which was opened to traffic on the same day. The immediate consequence of this measure was the elimination of 800 to 900 postage card locks (letter bags), since each of the post offices located on the railway now only has one bag on the railway mail instead of the 14 to 15 letter bags that it used to have to send by post coach cleared. The first English rail mail cars were already equipped with a device for dropping and catching letter bags (see: Mail catch hook ).
England followed Belgium, which opened the rail mail service in 1841, then France, where the first rail mail ran on the Paris - Rouen route on July 16, 1846 . In Germany, Baden was the state that preceded the establishment of a railway post in 1848, and Prussia followed a year later. Austria followed in 1850, Hungary in 1856, Sweden in 1863. The United States of America began on the Washington - New York route in 1864 , after attempts had already been made on the Quiney - St. Joseph (Missouri) route in 1862 , and Argentina in 1916 (on the Buenos Aires - Mendoza ).
Mail robbery
The valuable items transported in the rail mail cars were always worthwhile prey. Very often attacked u. a. in the US bandits rail mail van. (These robberies have always been a popular topic for Hollywood in Westerns since the silent film The Great Train Heist, which was filmed in 1903. ) That is why very solid rail mail cars with steel superstructures were put into service in the USA.
The most spectacular mail train robbery in Europe occurred in England. 1963 was a band of the London underworld, led by Bruce Reynolds a mail train the Royal Mail . The robbers captured 2.63 million English pounds in old notes. The attack was filmed with Horst Tappert for German television under the title The gentlemen ask for cash .
See also
- Post-U-Bahn Munich
- Post tram Berlin
- London Post Office Railway
- Postbahnhof
- Kursbuch (Germany) #Postkursbuch
- Apron car #Bahnpostwagen
literature
- Joachim Deppmeyer, Klaus Kirsch, Peter Wagner: Brief typology of German rail mail cars . Transpress Verlag, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-613-71215-6 .
- Railway mail wagon archive . Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Bahnpost eV (series of 25 issues so far).
- Archive for German Postal History
- Peter Schmelzle: Post by rail. 150 years of rail mail in Germany. Anniversary edition of the Deutsche Post AG, Bonn 2006.
-
Manual dictionary of the postal system , published by the Federal Ministry for the postal and telecommunications system,
- 2nd completely revised edition, Frankfurt am Main 1953.
- 3rd completely revised edition, Volume 1, Berlin 1971.
- Jürgen Jänecke:
- The transport of mail by rail from May 27, 1990 to May 27, 1995 between the traffic area West (VGW) and the traffic area East (VGO) and the rail posts within the VGO .
- The railway postmarks of the Deutsche Post offices on the territory of the GDR from 1945 to 1995 .
- The last rail mail from Berlin to East Prussia in 1945 .
- Franz Vierling (Ed.): Rail mail cars, shunting locomotives, railroad systems for postal traffic. The service at the Deutsche Bundespost, guidelines for training; Volume 9, Part 1 - 3 - Published with the support of the Federal Minister for Post and Telecommunications, Hamburg and Berlin 1966.
