royal mail stops sending mail by train in Uk

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2967564.stm .

( link originally provided by Mr Norman in the amtrak forum
http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=10278)

This is bad news . i remeber reading a rail magazine article on the mail trains , seemed a very good operation .
Also memories on my time in England ( around 15 years ago ) , with railworkers loading mailbags into offpeak comuter trains at waterloo , to be delivered around the southern system .
Prior to that i did voluntary work at Friends of the earth , and remember we use to send piority items by "red star ?" , which was british rails premier parcel service .

>>In Great Britain and other European countries, overnight postal trains linking major cities are common<<

In Britain they ceased last year. There were Travelling Post Office trains and ordinary freight trains but the Post Office withdrew. A few of the non-sorting trains returned at Christmas - the CEO of the Post Office who had cancelled mail trains resigned. His successor may be more in favour.

There were quite a few specially designed trains for the Post Office, including some dual system EMUs (third rail and overhead). Most of these are now out of use.<<

Basically, EWSR lost the contract. Another company GB Railfreight tendered for it but only got a few trains. The Post Office is in a bad state as people use e-mail and delivery times get worse.

I find that at work in the past two years I have received *no* documents by postal mail; all several hundred have been by e-mail. I work in a federal regulatory capacity for a large investor owned electric and gas utility. I am not surprised that postal mail has fallen off.

Ken W2KB wrote:I find that at work in the past two years I have received *no* documents by postal mail; all several hundred have been by e-mail. I work in a federal regulatory capacity for a large investor owned electric and gas utility. I am not surprised that postal mail has fallen off.

What's mildly amusing is that e-mail itself is becoming threatened by the continuing increase in spam (which seem to slowly be winning the war against filtering) - I've seen one quote of up to 80% of all e-mail being spam (perhaps I read this on Ed Foster's Gripline? or the Register.Uk.com?). Mobiles I hear are getting SMS and other types of spam too...

So, what's gonna replace e-mail and IMs?

ok , just picked u a december "rail" magazine , (which has just made its way 1/2 way round the world , who said slow mail is dead ! , my "trains" mag gets here a month beofre the issue date ), that says some mail trains were reinstated on 29 of Nov , for a 4 month trial .
The trains appear to be running form London to Glasgow , one would certainly think they would be competitive with both road and rail over this distance .
Lets hope the trial is successful .

Royal mail trains reinstated

2 trains a day between London and scotland .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/4568133.stm