Tuesday 16th December 2003 by Brian Hallett

Introduction

Having travelled on a Travelling Post Office service in June 2003 and with the end of the Travelling Post Office system only weeks away we made contact with our friends at TPO section to arrange a trip back to PRDC to have a more detailed look around the place and to witness the departure of the TPOs for one final time.

Even after a short few months several things have changed, TPO Section Manager is now Andy Baxter, who met us in the Car Park at 20:45 on the cold evening of Tuesday 16th December. Andy will see out the remaining TPOs, which after nearly 166 years of sterling service to this country will end on the night of 9th/10th January 2004.

Model of PRDC

After signing in at reception David Jackson, Brian White & myself were taken upstairs to the TPO Manager's Office for a drink of tea before the tour started. From the office a view of the conveyor system could be seen, which was not operational at this point.

After drinking our tea and having a chat with Andy we set off with the first port of call being to view the model of PRDC. The model itself is very detailed, with sections of the roof cut away so as to show the rail terminal with its rakes of TPOs berthed. The pictures shown here do not do justice to the model.

Mechanised Sorting / Conveyor System

There is a walkway that goes round part of the building from which you can view the activities without the need to go down to the machinery. As can be seen in the pictures there is a large conveyor system in the centre of the building with some 41 loading / unloading bays round the side of the building for use by road lorries. You can also see a vast array of "Yorks" on the left of the picture, these being named after the place they were first introduced at.

All the bays were in use with lorries continually being unloaded. Viewing the work going on was like watching an army of ants swarming everywhere. With the Christmas rush in full swing there were many temporary staff working as well as permanent staff.

The "yorks" that were removed from each lorry would be forwarded to one of two areas. If the "York" already contained bags for a particular train service it would be moved close to the rail head where a system of lines allowed "Yorks" to be queued up waiting for a tractor to take them directly to the train, a tractor being capable of hauling up to six "Yorks" at a time. If a "York" held a mixture of mail then it would be taken to the conveyor system where a group of operators would manually empty each "York" and place it on the conveyor with an operator punching its destination into a computer so that as the bag went round the conveyor system it would be tipped into a spiral chute at the correct location, once at the bottom of the chute it would be manually picked up and placed into another "York" for forwarding on. The areas where the bags for the TPOs were collected seemed to be rather busy and as we were to find out later one of the TPOs workload increase by 60% at Christmas.

Railhead Viewing Gallery

The walkway also provided a viewing gallery overlooking the railhead, which is connected directly to the mechanised sorting area. Here we were able to see the tractors moving the "yorks" to each of the trains. We also saw one member of a TPO crew walking along the platform carrying the all important teapot!

The railhead provides seven bay platforms, each capable of handling up to 12 carriage lengths, i.e. 3 class 325 EMUs. Although the picture shows two trains in the right hand bays, these two bays have since been taken out of use following the withdrawal of the South Wales TPO, East Anglian TPO & South Eastern TPOs in July. Royal Mail planned to fill the platforms in to create more loading bays, but this work has been held up for various reasons and at the time of the visit was running some four months behind schedule.

Andy pointed out that during the Christmas period the amount of work on a TPO increases quite dramatically. The Great Western TPO normally handles around 1000 mail bags per night, but during December can increase by some 60% to 1600 bags of mail.

It was also pointed out that before the run down of rail services by Royal Mail there were no fewer than 154 movements per day at PRDC.

While viewing the trains from the gallery we met the train manager of the North West Down TPO, who offered to take us down to visit his TPO.

Rail Terminal Platforms

As we walked out onto the platforms we were given a quick H&S talk on where to walk and what to avoid. The platforms having a defined yellow walkway that runs close to the edge of the platform, the centres of the platforms being for the tractors to move about.

Inside POT 80428, which still had a 'S' prefix before its number inside the vehicle, we were able to talk to the TPO Manager and his assistant (sorry guys I forgot to make a note of your names).

It was very apparent when talking to the managers that they were fiercely proud of their own particular TPO, of their staff and of the TPO traditions. Brian White, who had worked on the TPO system for most of his working life, was soon talking about the goings on during his time aboard and yet again managed to find someone on board the North West TPO that he had worked with before.

Our time on board was over all too quickly and we had to step off and return to the viewing area, but not before the crew had given us a few TPO souvenirs. At 23:10 the Great Western TPO departed followed by the North Eastern TPO at 23:12 and finally the North Western TPO at 23:18.

For the record the following locos were at PRDC on the TPOs that night :
47793 "Christopher Wren" was at the front of the Great Western TPO
67017 "Arrow" had pulled the North East TPO to PRDC and 90027 would haul it to Newcastle
90026 was at the front of the North West TPO

As we made our way back to the car, we noted the North West TPO passing us on one of the lines. Both the Great Western TPO and North West TPO have to reverse out of PRDC before proceeding on their way; the North Eastern does not have to perform this operation.

We would like to thank Andy Baxter at Royal Mail for allowing us to make this visit.