Welcome to Vintage Railroad Postcards!

Thank you for stopping by! This is the blog for the Russell P. Panecki Collection of vintage railroad-related postcards. The entire collection consists of nearly one thousand so far with images dating from circa 1904 to the 1950s. To leave a comment, ask a question, to contribute or correct historical information, a comment box is located to the left for your convenience.

Each page, including this homepage, has an index located in the lower portion of the page. In addition to the index, posts were updated with historical information, new postcards added from storage files, while some posts were completely rewritten or edited for corrections. Three articles have been added and are worth reading. They include how vintage postcards were made, the history of Pennsylvania Station, and the history of Grand Central Terminal.

My apologies, but the postcards in my collection and on this blog are not available for sale, copying, or for contribution to projects. Please keep in mind that I reserve all rights to the images and content of this blog.

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Railway Post Office Car, Interior View

The federal government considered that any route traveled by a train would become a mail route creating a national network of railroad mail service named, appropriately, Railway Mail Service or RMS. The first RMS run was on the Chicago and Northwestern Railway in 1864. Railroads from the mighty to the tiny held government contract to carry the mail between cities and to remote mountain villages, essentially anywhere a railroad travelled. Railroads also had fleets of railway post offices, or RPOs, for mail sorting between stations, towns, and cities. Mail sorting in an RPO was hard, fast-paced work with only the most reputable and qualified applicants becoming clerks for the RMS. They also carried sidearms to protect against an attempted robbery. In this circa 1906 view, we get to see the interior of an RPO and a clerk sorting the mail. For more information on this fascinating aspect of US Mail and railroading history, click Here and Here.  



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