Mail compartment
Mail compartments are the parts of train luggage and passenger cars of the railways intended for mail purposes . They were used in trains in which the hiring of a rail mail car was not worthwhile due to the low traffic, especially on branch lines , or where the nature of the train, such as express multiple units , was not possible.
construction
The mail compartments are closed off from the luggage or passenger compartment of the railroad cars by a partition. Where necessary, a narrow lockable door is provided in this partition so that the train driver can get from his compartment in the baggage car into the passenger car behind the mail compartment. On the Deutsche Bundesbahn , only the mail compartments set up in four-axle baggage cars had a narrow door that was connected to the luggage compartment.
All mail compartments, with the exception of the smaller compartments in some four-axle baggage cars and multiple units, have the facilities necessary for the postal service in their interior and special loading doors and letter boxes on each outside. They also have the inscription "Post" on each long side.
The postal companies bore the costs incurred for the production of the post office equipment and its maintenance, as well as for any removal. In addition to these post compartments with special facilities for the purpose of mail delivery, locked passenger compartments or part of the loading area of the luggage trolley were also made available as "post compartments".
Germany
The Prussian postal administration initially used such compartments in fast-moving trains. The size of the mail compartments was determined in 1880 so that they could not be longer than four meters as a rule. In the 1950s, the dimensions of the mail compartments were agreed on a case-by-case basis between the Federal Post Office and the railways.
The railroad cars with mail compartments were given the following abbreviations:
- Pw Post = post compartment in two-axle baggage car
- Pw Post 3 = post compartment in three-axle baggage car
- Pw Post 4ü = post compartment in four-axle baggage car with transition bridges and bellows (for D-trains)
- C Post = post compartment in 3rd class two-axle passenger car.
The Deutsche Bundespost paid the railways a fee for the transport of the mail compartments based on the number of axle kilometers driven for the purpose of the postal service . The post compartments in vehicles of the Deutsche Bundesbahn were counted regardless of the size of the post compartment and the number of axles of the car with one axle. To ensure that the train driver wrote down the axle kilometers correctly, a cardboard board with a yellow border and the inscription "1 axle post from ... to ..." had to be hung up on a window on each side of the car in the mail compartments, as long as the compartment was used to transport mail. If the compartment was set up in wagons of the private and small railways, the axle kilometers of the postal compartments were calculated according to the ratio of the length of the compartment to the length of the wagon.
In transit traffic through the GDR , mail was often used in post compartments. This offered the possibility of adapting the required loading space to the respective operational requirements without costly effort.
At the beginning of the 1970s, the number of mail compartments in passenger coaches and railcars of the Deutsche Bundesbahn was:
- Passenger carriages with a post compartment and postal facilities: 11 pieces
- Diesel multiple units with post compartment: 12 units
- Electric railcars with post compartment: -
Austria
In Austria there was a post office on the trolleybus line in Gmünd .
literature
-
Handheld dictionary of postal services
- 2nd Edition: Post compartments, pp 489-490,
- 3rd edition: Rail mail cars and mail compartments by Harry Miosga, p. 190.
- Walther Brandt: Two-axle baggage car with a post compartment of the Brandenburg city railway . In: From the fiery Elias and the gentle Elise. Albis-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1968.