This is the night mail…trains return to get UK post back on track

ROYAL MAIL is to reinstate deliveries by rail in an attempt to restore public confidence in the postal network.

Less than six months after abandoning the railways -with the exception of one train -the company is negotiating for a return of overnight delivery by rail as early as next month.

The service was scrapped in January as part of a drive to save Royal Mail Pounds 90m a year. It said road and air services represented better value.

The company’s U-turn comes after it accepted it had miscalculated in believing road and air transport alone could meet its needs.

The demise of the rail service had been criticised by customers in remote areas who claimed delivery had deteriorated with the end of the mail train, immortalised by WH Auden in his poem Night Mail.

Among those who have pressed for the reinstatement are the Carlisle MP Eric Martlew. He claims businesses in his constituency have suffered since mail from the southeast was routed via air to Newcastle and then road. “I know it has not worked,” said Martlew. “We pay for next-day delivery from the Commons to the constituency on a daily basis and at least once a week it fails to arrive the next day.

“Last week, 25,000 letters to Cumbria couldn’t be delivered on time because fog at Newcastle meant they had to go via Edinburgh. There’s been a feeling that things deteriorated pretty badly as soon as rail deliveries stopped.”

Despite restoring overnight transport of post, Royal Mail has no plans to reintroduce the mobile offices on which staff sorted mail as the trains travelled across the country.

Royal Mail has come in for widespread criticism over its switch to single daily deliveries and the knock-on effect of the cuts. Postcomm, the industry regulator, revealed earlier this month that 14m letters are lost or stolen each year.

In some sorting offices that have switched to a single daily delivery, the volume of complaints has been so great that staff have been ordered to ignore phone calls.

This weekend, Royal Mail confirmed that negotiations with GB Railfreight are at an advanced stage.

A spokesman said: “We thought we could use air and road services at a much cheaper cost while maintaining the service customers expect. These have been major changes and there have been some difficulties but we are pressing on resolving them.”