UK Royal Mail post-sorting trains are now cancelled

Special rail services on which post is sorted en route have made their final journeys. The so-called Travelling Post Offices (TPO) are being axed under cost-cutting plans that will save the Royal Mail £10 million a year.

Hundreds of jobs will be lost, but the workers will be redeployed or offered voluntary redundancy. Trade unions accused the Royal Mail of “industrial recklessness” and said that there would be extra pollution as mail is switched to roads.

Bulk mail will still be transported by rail, but that is also being phased out in the next few months despite fierce opposition from unions and environmentalists.

The first journey by a TPO was in 1838 from London to the Midlands and more than 130 services were in use by the First World War.

The Royal Mail said that the travelling sorting offices were a Victorian solution to a Victorian problem of moving post around before the era of motorways and air travel. “Like mail coaches before them, TPOs are now part of the Royal Mail’s history, not its future,” a spokesman said.

The company said that it had invested heavily in high-tech automated equipment that sorts 30,000 letters an hour compared with 3,000 on the trains.

Many of the staff have worked together for more than 20 years, regularly staying away from home.