Marking a golden age when the mail travelled by rail

It was immortalised by WH Auden and now a new online archive celebrates the history of the night mail. Sarah Freeman reports.
Travelling Post Office in 1935Travelling Post Office in 1935
Travelling Post Office in 1935

The conditions were cramped, the shifts long and the work repetitive. Yet there was something about the old Travelling Post Offices which spoke of the glamour of the railways.

It was partly, of course, down to WH Auden and Benjamin Britten. It was Britain’s leading poet and the renowned composer who penned the words and music to the final few minutes of a short information film about the service. Night Mail released in 1936, a decade or so before Brief Encounter inspired a dozen railway romances, gave a glimpse into another world, one which existed while the rest of us slept.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It’s 10 years this month that the last of the TPOs, which once regularly made their way from Darlington through to York and onwards to Doncaster, began its final journey and to mark the anniversary, The British Postal Museum has opened up a brand new online archive.

“The carriages were introduced in 1838 to save time, sorting mail on route rather than waiting until it reached its final destination,” says the museum’s Sara Carr. “It was a pioneering way of transporting mail and before the widespread use of automobiles and aircraft the TPOs offered an efficient way to transport mail across the country.”

The online archive includes a potted history of the night mail trains as well as first hand memories of those who worked on them. The TPOs belong to the same era as individual carriages with plush red velvet seats – the kind Agatha Christie’s Poirot sat on while contemplating his latest whodunit. However, for the earliest TPO employees there was little in the way of luxury.

“The very early carriages were quite primitive,” says Sarah. “They had only oil lighting with low roofs and there was no heating or even toilets. In an article about life on the TPOs published in 1894, Alfred K Jacobs, wrote, ‘Those men who get their work well forward will venture to bring out their supper, so that they may snatch a few mouthfuls as they are finishing up; but alas... a relish is provided in the shape of smoke, thick enough to taste, which is enough to choke any many’.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Yet despite the fumes which belched out of the early locomotives, there was a keen sense of pride among the workforce. As Ernie Gosling, one of the last TPO sorters put it back in 1990, “it’s not a job, it’s a way of life.”

“On all TPO routes timing was crucial and delays were disastrous causing problems with deliveries throughout the whole postal network,” says Sarah. “We tend to forget, but until 1880 there was no national standard time. The mail guard would carry an official timepiece set to London time with which he recorded arrival and departure times. It was well know that those who lived in the country could set their clock by the arrival of the TPO.”

Delays due to bad weather weren’t the only problem. Back in the mid to late 19th-century health and safety hadn’t yet been invented and in the space of just seven years, TPOs were involved in 28 serious accidents.

As safety records improved, so did confidence in the night mail service. It became a vital part of Britain’s infrastructure, but in the early hours of August 8, 1963 the Glasgow to London train was the focus of one of the century’s most audacious heists when the Great Train Robbers made off, albeit briefly, with £2.5m.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It was the beginning of the end. Earlier the same year, Dr Beeching had published his controversial report on the reshaping of British Railways. As with most restructures it meant closures and cutbacks and as the months ticked by a large number of smaller lines and stations, deemed to be uneconomic, closed. “From then on the network went into decline and in 1988 a radical review of the TPO service was introduced which meant the removal and re-routing of several lines,” says Sarah.

The changes left only 35 mail trains in service and six years later the number had been reduced to just 24. By 2000, the remaining 500 workers who still managed to sort 1.75m letters a night accounted for less than one per cent of the total postal workforce, The golden age of TPOs had to come to an end.

“They were the backbone of the long distance rail network for well over a century... it might seem strange to end them, but it is worth reminding ourselves why it has to be... technology has moved on...” said Steve Griffith then TPO manager.

The final sorters boarded the last of the mail trains on January 9, 2004. By the following morning, a chapter in Britain’s rail and postal history had come to a close.

To find out more go to www.postalheritage.org.uk

Related topics: