Interchange RPOs

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Were RPO's interchanged between ACL, RF&P and FEC? I have never seen photos of one road's railway post offices operating on the other's trains.

-- Nicholas Glisson (NGlisson@AOL.com), August 03, 2001

Answers

I don't know about the ACL, RF&P, and FEC, but the RPO's were interchanged on the "Crescent". I have consists that show L&N RPO's moving out of Montgomery, AL, on West Point Route 38. While I haven't checked to be certain, I imagine SouRy cars ran through also. The crew came off, a new crew got on, and the cars ran through.

Bob Hanson

-- Robert H. Hanson (RHanson669@aol.com), August 06, 2001.


While you cannot say that it never happened, it is true that RPO's rarely strayed off of a road. The reason for this was that the RPO routes were set up in most cases to cover specific city pairs which were about a work shift apart. There was no provision for postal workers to sleep on an RPO, so most trips were 8-10 hours maximum. So- as an example- on the FEC Miami-Jax was one trip, and the RPO was detached. Thus, the FEC RPO did not need to go further north. Another RPO route(which I used to mail some materials back in 1969)ran between Jacksonville and Raleigh and ran on the Silver Star.

I am sure that someone in the Society has a list of the RPO routes and the city pairs.

-- Michael W. Savchak (Savchak @MNR.org), August 03, 2001.


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