Royal Mail trains to Glasgow are to be scrapped after 132 years on the tracks

Royal Mail trains which carry overnight sorting offices to Glasgow are to be scrapped next year.

The cost-cutting move will bring to an end to more than 130 years of history and affect almost 80 staff who work on the travelling post offices (TPOs).

Staff who man the 132-year-old mail train service fear they will lose their jobs as a result.

And they are also concerned that the move will mean a reduced service for customers.

One worker said: "Bosses claim it is progress, but there is a real fear that this will result in a reduced service for people

wanting their mail delivered."

Royal Mail, which is losing around (pounds) 1million a day, said it hoped to avoid compulsory redundancies and insisted customers would not suffer.

The company announced earlier this year that it was reviewing all its road, rail and air transport links.

The review is part of a wider three-year recovery plan to bring the troubled delivery firm back into profitability.

Before the Second World War there were 77 travelling post offices in the UK.

But now services on the 15 remaining routes, including the Glasgow to Cardiff run which is the only remaining Scots service, will be axed.

Mailbags are sorted manually on board the trains and are then off-loaded at stations en-route for delivery to towns and villages across the UK.

It was a Royal Mail train from Glasgow to London which was involved in the notorious Great Train Robbery in 1963.

And six years ago Glasgow post office worker John Thomson died when his Royal Mail train collided with a derailed freight train near Stafford.

Today a Royal Mail spokeswoman confirmed that the mail trains were to be axed.

She said: "The use of travelling post offices on the Cardiff to Glasgow line will cease in May 2003.

"Any job losses related to the ceasing of TPOs we hope to achieve through natural wastage and redeployment of staff within other parts of Royal Mail Group.

"Volunteers for redundancies are being sought throughout Royal Mail as a group and it is anticipated this will create greater opportunities for people to move from one part of the business to another.

"Where these options are not possible, voluntary severance packages will also be made

available."

Royal Mail currently operates the UK's largest road vehicle fleet as well as overnight rail and air networks, moving 81 million items a day in the UK, including eight million in Scotland.

The new distribution network will rely on planes and high-volume articulated lorries.

Rail transport will still be used for bulk products and second class items.

TIMESFILE

lIn November 1830 the Royal Mail was entrusted to the

railway for the first time,

beginning a new era in the

history of communication.

lBy the spring of 1846 the

railway age had arrived and the last of the London-based horse-drawn coaches had been taken off the road.

lEarly mail trains were called Railway Post Offices (RPOs) but in 1928 The Post Office renamed them Travelling Post Offices (TPOs).

lToday's TPOs have not changed much since the early sixties, and the way in which they work (apart from the machinery) has not really changed at all.

lOn August 8, 1963 the mail train from Glasgow to London entered crime folklore when it was ambushed by an armed gang in what became known as The Great Train Robbery.

lRonnie Biggs and Buster Edwards were among 20

people involved in the theft of almost (pounds) 5million in (pounds) 1 and (pounds) 5 notes, an amount estimated to be worth around (pounds) 64m today.

lEarlier this year the family of a Glasgow postal worker who died in a crash involving a mail train at Stafford in 1996 received (pounds) 155,000 damages.

John Thomson, from Dennistoun, was killed and 17 other postal workers, mostly Scots, injured when the Birmingham-Glasgow post train collided with a derailed freight train.