The Travelling Post Office

Gallery

WD 90346 on goods train passing Sage's Lane lineside apparatus, near Peterborough

Sage's Lane, Walton, Peterborough in 1958.
Photographer : Unknown

WD 90346 passes on the down slow with a rake of empty coal wagons from New England.

The feature that is of interest is the two sets of standards on the right hand side. The furthest lineside also has the wayside nets for collecting mail from the TPO coach.

Brian White, one of the two TPO Project Co-ordinators used to work this set of lineside apparatus during his career in the Post Office.

LNER C9, 2171, leaving Darlington on a TPO train

Class C9 No 2171 on the 7-10 pm Newcastle - York train (which conveyed mail vans at the front bound for Kings Cross) leaving Darlington, August 1933.

The first two vehicles are a ex NER and a ex GCR passenger brake van, then two TPO's. The fifth is an ex GNR 51' mail tender converted from a milk van, then two ex GNR passenger luggage vans.

Section of Mark 1 TPO SC 80316 at Inverness

British Railway's TPO SC 80315 seen at Inverness on the 30th August 1966. Note the toilet window has been plated over, as a result of the Great Train Robbery.

80315 was built in 1961 and was one of only 3 British Railway mark one TPOs (80315 - 80317) to be initially allocated to Scotland.

Photographer : Unknown

Surviving panel from LNWR built TPO M30209M

The picture to the left has been sent to us by Simeon Gaskell and is a section from the body panelling of M30209M, which still survives. It just goes to show that there are still many TPO related artefacts preserved than most realise.

This vehicle had a long and interesting life. It was built in 1918 as the last of 3 vehicles to diagram 83 and was given the WCJS number 454, which became LMS 2312 in 1923 and LMS 30209 in the 1933 renumbering. It was the last ex WCJS post office vehicle to operate being withdrawn in March 1965.

Diagram 83 was a 64'0" design and were given the WCJS numbers 452-454. Whilst the chassis and bogies were new build the bodies were made by incorporating two older 32'0" TPO bodies and had previously been LNWR numbers 9501, 9509, and 9513 of diagram 395 (built in 1892) married with 9508, 9514, and 9516 of diagram 404 (built in 1894) respectively.

They had a somewhat ungainly appearance as they were mounted on standard 9'0" wheelbase bogies, and to keep the minimum wheelbase down to 33'0" necessary to operate the point locking bars, these had to be mounted well in from the ends of the vehicle.

All remained in traffic until the 1960s and M30209M was given a new lease of life as a consequence of the Great Train Robbery at Sears Crossing in 1963. It was selected for tests of a short-wave alarm system which involved a device like a frying pan mounted on the roof, and was also equipped with an audible alarm which, when activated, caused the message "Help, help! The train is being attacked by bandits" to be amplified through a megaphone.

Location : Carlisle
Date : c1951 - c1963
Photographer : Unknown

Built to the same diagram and lot as our own M30272M, M30273M is pictured during the early part of its career before any modifications have taken place. There are no Electric Train Heating cables, the toilet window has not been plated over and there is no loud hailer in the roof, which would have been added after the Great Train Robbery of 1963. This vehicle would have entered traffic as M30273, with the suffix being added c1951 when the BR standard coaches were introduced.

The following information has been supplied by Mick Wright - Ex Cale TPO / Up/Down Spl TPO and Ex North East TPO (Geordie side):

The location is Carlisle station. The coaches would have been detached from the N.W Night Down TPO that morning and held in Carlisle while the rest of the Night Down coaches went forward to Glasgow as part of a parcel train via Dumfries and Kilmarnock at around 6am. These coaches were then became part of that nights UP SPL TPO along with the stock from the DOWN SPL TPO.

The two coaches in the photo were attached to the rear of the UP SPL at Carlisle and became the two London division coaches, ie, North, Northwest and Padd in one and Southwest, Southeast and East in the other. This practice ended in the late fifties or early sixties but I can remember seeing the coaches being shunted onto the back of the UP SPL.

Three of the moveable peg rails from M30272M. These are currently stored awaiting restoration for use on M30272M, but it does demonstrate that parts from one vehicle could easily move to another.

The moveable pegrails would be placed over the sliding doors of the carriage during transit to create extra space for hanging bags, these obviously moved from one coach to another, with M30272M ending up with at least an example from 30233 and 30250.

It should also be noted that M30272M arrived with a set of carriage apparatus that was labelled as being from 30222 (Could this have been a writing error by the person labelling the parts?).