Last post sounds end of the line for night mail

Last post sounds end of the line for night mail
From THE TIMES, June 16th, 2001

Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent and Mia Jarlov THE Travelling Post Office, celebrated in WH Auden's 1935 poem Night
Mail, is to be shunted into the sidings after 150 years of service. Letters of thanks and letters from banks will no longer be sorted on
board the train by the army of more than 500 workers travelling the length and
breadth of the country. Auden's verse and Benjamin Britten's music were combined in the
pioneering documentary film, also called Night Mail, commissioned by the
General Post Office 65 years ago. The rhythm of the poem echoes the
clickety-clack of the steam train as it heads through the night from London to
Glasgow. The TPOs are falling victim to cost-cutting at the Royal Mail, which
is reviewing its whole commitment to carrying the post by rail. Of the 80
million letters posted each day, 20 million are sent by rail, of which only a
fraction is sorted en route. Another five million letters are sent by plane
and 55 million by road. The rail freight industry is having to respond to the challenge of
road and air by introducing 125mph trains, which arrive in time for the mail
to be sorted at its destination. Staff who currently pigeon-hole the mail on board 18 trains a night
are renowned as the fastest sorters in the country, with each man (and they
are nearly all men) handling 1,200 letters an hour. The service is expensive,
however. The 520 staff are paid a special allowance on top of the standard
sorter's wage, and most have to stay in guest houses every other day before
catching the return train. They are thought likely to be redeployed. Up to now, the Royal Mail had persisted with TPOs because they were
the only way to guarantee next-day delivery to far-flung addresses. However,
English, Welsh and Scottish Railway, which operates the TPOs, is testing goods
trains which can run at 125mph instead of the present 110mph maximum. TPOs are
forced to travel even more slowly, with 90mph deemed the maximum "comfort
speed" for sorting mail in swaying carriages. The new 125mph trains will shave an hour off most routes, allowing
post to be fed into high-speed electronic sorting machines when it arrives. The TPO dates back to 1838, when a horse box was converted into a
rudimentary sorting office on the Birmingham to Warrington railway. A year
later nets used to snatch mail bags were introduced, allowing trains to
collect letters without stopping. TPOs have steadily declined since their heyday in 1938, when 77 raced
up and down at night. The London-Glasgow direct train, which hit the headlines
again when it became the target of the Great Train Robbery in 1963, made its
last journey in 1993. The nets were dismantled in 1971. Now only 18 trains a night operate between London and Newcastle,
Carlisle, Swansea, Plymouth, Dover and Norwich, and also from Bristol to
Newcastle and Penzance and Cardiff to Glasgow. The carriages are all at least
23 years old, with some in service since 1968. Apart from the demise of steam, little has changed on board the TPO
since Night Mail was released. The film shows staff sorting the mail and
taking a break to make tea and warm pies at a small oven in the corner. "We still warm pies from an oven which is powered by the train and we
still boil water for tea in an urn in the corner, just like in Night Mail,"
said Chris Leonard, manager of the Cardiff to Glasgow TPO. His 18 years of
service make him a relative newcomer on board. Some staff have spent 40 years
travelling up and down on TPOs. "If you're still there after a year you tend to stay on the TPO for
the rest of your life. Time goes fast on board because, unlike at sorting
offices, there's no time for clockwatching," said Mr Leonard. The teams work at a frenzied pace to sort mail into individual
postmen's rounds, ready to drop off at stations en route. Sons often follow
fathers on to the trains. One family was struck by tragedy in a crash
involving a TPO at Stafford in 1996 when a man was killed as he stood sorting
mail with his son. Mr Leonard said: " We sort the same way as we did in the
1800s, putting mail into pigeon holes and then bundling it up. But no one has
yet found a quicker or more efficient way of doing it." The removal of the TPOs, which are likely to be phased out rather
than axed simultaneously, will end the special TPO frank, much prized by stamp
collectors. (c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2001THE TIMES, 16th June 2001