Railway Post Office RPO ended June 30 1977

I have been fascinated for many years by RPO history.  For a number of years I belonged to the Mobile Post Office Society which deals in the history of the railway mail service and the highway mail service.  I also collected RPO postmark mail for several years - trains and trucks.  After a while I  became less interested in those things but still have a lot of RPO memorabilia.

The railway mail service began in 1834 in a small way.  It replaced stage coaches and pony express.  Among the many old books I collected is a 1903 History of the Railway Mail Service.  It has some interesting data on the early days of the RPO as well as information on the daily life of a railway mail clerk.

Above is a 1909 postcard view of the interior of an RPO car.  The purpose of these cars was to take a load of mail for their rail route and sort the mail enroute for delivery to stations along the rail route.  RPO clerks had to memorize all of the stations on the route and be able to toss each piece of mail into the correct mail bag as the RPO car lurched along the rails.  The bags would then be tossed out at the correct station and a new bag of mail would be grabbed from a trackside mail crane as the train passed the station.

Above is a 1940's RPO car interior.

Above is a collage of RPO marks on letters and postcards from my collection.

There were hundreds of RPO routes around the country.  Most RPO marks had the routes abbreviated so you usually need a route listing to identify the route.

Many years ago I worked with a man who had worked on the Washington DC to New York RPO route before it was shut down in 1977.  That was the last operational route.  He had some interesting stories.

Scrap yard fence complete

The scrap yard now is fully enclosed with a fence as well as the office structure and the trackside crane stone base.  The gate to the scrap yard is on the far side of the enclosure.  This facility fills the open area at the inside corner of the layout extension.

The scrap yard is surrounded by various industries.

Most of the fence was made using the Alloy Forms cast metal kit.  To fill it out I used corrugated metal sheet material and wood strips.

I have added a very few scrap items at this point, but I have selected two boxes of potential metal scrap material that needs to be painted and weathered.  There will be a fair amount of railroad parts as well as a number of automobile parts and scrap auto bodies.  I will not be using any commercial molded scrap piles as I do not believe they look very realistic.  Detailing and installing this scrap material is actually quite time consuming.  I am still building the steam shovel/bucket lift for the yard.

I also decided to hang the wood scrap box from the crane hook.

Scrap yard trackside crane

This crane is for loading scrap into gondola cars for transport to the steel mill.  The crane is an Alexander Scale Models kit.  I eliminated the round cement style base and instead constructed a larger stone platform from hydrocal rock wall casting scraps with a hydocal sidewalk casting for the top.

I added a figure holding the hook and constructed a wood style scrap box for loading the scrap into the gondolas.

Above is a rear view of the side of the crane that will be inside of the scrap yard fence.

Above is the prototype for my scrap box.  This was a product of the Jacob Shannon company in the early 1900's.  They also manufactured a metal version.  The lever on the left side was pulled to disconnect the attached chain to dump the box.

My father's T&E railroad - more photos

Two years ago I posted photos of my father's Troll & Elfin railroad (route of the teeny folk), along with a little background on him.  Today, on fathers day, I am posting some more.  His approach to model railroading was to have fun, so he did not adhere that much to any prototype.

Above is a photo of one of his industries (Drake's International Foods) named as usual for one of his friends.  He placed figures in front of it for a humorous scene.

My father loved camelback locomotives and most of his locomotives were camelbacks - many were kit bashed from non-camelback locos.  He had a weekly model group that met at each others house - they were called the camel drivers.

Above is a photo of his scratch built Troll station.  It was modeled after one of the western narrow gauge stations.  I still have that model, but it needs a little repair work.  The Gay hotel behind the station was named for his friend Bill Gay of Phoenix Arizona.  Bill passed away many years ago.

My father was a life long member of the NMRA and contributed many articles to the NMRA Bulletin (now the NMRA Magazine), especially during the time Whit Towers was the Bulletin editor.  Whit and my father were good friends.  My father and several of his friends were, however,  critical of some of the things the NMRA did, such as building a headquarters building which became an expense burden for the NMRA and was finally disposed of by Charlie Getz and his administration.  As a result of my fathers irritation with the headquarters and other things, he built the tongue-in-cheek model below.

The signs for the building were made for him by his friend Bud Sima.  I still have this structure.

The T&E and my father are long gone but I remember them well.

Scrap yard model office

I have built the scrap yard office, but will probably detail and weather it further after it is on the layout.  The walls are corrugated metal and the rest is wood strips.  The window and door are scratch built.  The chimney is a wood dowel.  I put a small work bench in the shed area - the top is a commercial part and I added wood legs.

This is a simple structure.

What has taken so much of my time is that I am building a Vintage Vehicles Erie B-2 steam shovel kit which will be modified to have a grab bucket instead of the shovel.  Vintage Vehicles apparently stopped production of their models about 1994, but sold the steam shovel kit to Jordan (which I have heard is now out of business).  There are a lot of parts to this plastic kit and I found out the hard way that my Plastruct liquid glue does not hold well on it so I changed to other glues.  This shovel will be placed in the scrap yard to move scrap around.

I have also started on a corrugated metal fence using an old Alloy Forms kit.  Parts (front and back) are above - painted and weathered.  The kit walls are made of cast metal.  I am not sure there are enough wall parts to surround the scrap yard so I will have to come up with something else to fill in.

Below is a photo of some wood strips I picked up at Walmart (they have a craft aisle).  They are called "skinny sticks" and are about 6 inches long and 1/4" x 3/16" with 75 pieces in the pack - cost less than a dollar as I recall.  They are great for bracing the inside of structures.  All sticks are straight unlike the craft sticks (I refer to them as popsicle sticks) many of which are warped.

More later.  Happy fathers day to you fathers out there.  My kids will be here tomorrow so I am looking forward to that.

Model scrap yard planning

First I would like to thank the folks who posted the nice comments on my last posting of the carpenter shop.  I enjoy getting feedback.  I do monitor all comments before they are posted to prevent spam or improper comments.  I also do not allow links within the comments.

My next model will be a scrap yard.   At my last coffee get-together with my model railroad friends I asked them if they knew the difference between a junk yard and a scrap yard - none did.  Basically a scrap yard is for ferrous metal materials as scrap yards were originally intended to supply steel mills.  Junk yards are dumping places for almost anything.  Previously a comment was made when I announced I would be modeling a scrap yard that I should have a lot of old cars in it.  There will definitely be some old cars, maybe truck parts, but I will be including a lot of railroad parts as I have a LOT of those.  I do have a small steel mill on my main layout so this scrap yard can supply it.

Above is a 1940's vintage scrap yard - much larger than I will be making as I do not have that much room.  My area is approximately a 16 x 16 x 20 inch triangle with a railroad track along one side.

I have been somewhat familiar for some time with the Kovalchick Salvage company, which among other things, owns the East Broad Top narrow gauge railroad not too far from my home.  They also own a sizable scrap yard in Indiana, PA.  I believe they had originally planned to turn the EBT into scrap.  It has not been operational for some years so it's future is uncertain.

Above is another 1940s scrap yard photo.

My scrap yard model should be fairly easy to build as it will mostly consist of a surrounding fence, an office shack, and a loading crane by the tracks.  I am also building a Vintage Vehicles Erie B-2 steam shovel kit which I am going to fit with a clam shell bucket to handle materials in the yard.  The rest of the project will consist of making piles of scrap from parts.

Some years ago I made a small junk yard on my main layout tucked under a highway bridge behind a small oil depot.

I call it Piggios junk yard.  The railroad crane in the foreground is an old kit (not sure of the manufacturer) that I modified with a new housing and a steam  boiler.

Carpenter shop completion

I have made various modifications to the carpenter shop and yard area, as well as adding more scenery.  All details have also been glued in place.

This carpenter shop project was fun  and I think it turned out well.  Sometimes small projects are more interesting than large industries.

I rearranged the details and added sawdust under the saw horses.  I also added two figures.  The scrap pile at the back between the structures has been expanded.

Above is a higher level view.

Next project

My next project will be a scrap yard.  It will fill a bare area in the middle of the layout area.

Carpenter shop on the layout

The carpenter shop is now installed on the layout.  The details are not glued down as I want to think about their positioning for a while - I may decide to move some things around.  The first photo below shows a number of the details I have either scratch built or in the case of commercial parts, painted them.

The two wheel cart is scratch built as are the chair, bench, work bench, saw horses and the strange machine in the center (that machine is being repaired by the carpenter).  The tool box, grinding wheel and about half of the tools are commercial parts.  The barrels are all commercial parts.

The shop is close to the edge of the layout - you can see the layout edge at the bottom left.  I still need to add scenery around the complex.  The platform with the ice cream shop is across the tracks on the right.  Not much scenery yet in the background area.

Above is a view of mostly the yard area.  The tool box is sitting on the bench.

This was an interesting and fairly simple construction project.  Almost everything I build is subject to later changes - in this case mostly the fence and yard area.  The fence is board by board.