Mail by Rail -- Amtrak Postal Service

[STrRedWolf]

We keep mentioning mail by rail in other topics here... might as well have it's own (and I couldn't find one appropriate). In a different thread...

Many above have mentioned mail contracts. Remember that the USPS Inspector General recommended using more rail in 2012. Nothing apparently came of it. I even thought that that might have been the reason behind Amtrak changing the baggage dorms to just plan baggage cars. Perhaps this could be the first step?

https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/not-your-f ... s-railroad

I got to wonder about the logistics now a days. UPS may have the best way where they have a container-in-plane methodology so they can unload shipments fast...

All this contingent of more proper HSR (and the stars aligning). NY to Chicago in 5 hours?

[John_Perkowski]

RPSA 70

It gave Amtrak the authority to run passenger service, not bulk mail service. There were a very few working RPOs on A Day, but as I recall the USPS terminated them in Amtrak’s first 15 years.

Under Mr Warrington, Amtrak had its “Mail and Express” initiative ... and here’s your answer: The Class 1 railroads went to court, because Amtrak was outside RPSA ‘70, and taking their business. They got a permanent injunction.

Yes, the postal service should use rail ... and the freight railroads will get the containers or the trailers.

If you want Amtrak to be the provider, then round up 218, 51, and 1.

[Gilbert B Norman]

Colonel Sir, just to afirm yet expand on your immediate comments, Amtrak had authority under RPSA 70 to handle US Mail as an ancilliary business line. That is to say, referencing your first pre-Amtrak experience, mail could be handled as it was on UP 9 & 10, but "not exactly" as it was on UP #5 & #6 with twenty head end cars and one or two Coaches.

Ed Ellis, and his superiors, seemed to think they had license to recreate UP #5 and #6, and GN #7 & 8, for Amtrak's account. How he "got away with" the Amtrak "Mixtos Diario" for as long as he did, escapes me.

[Rockingham Racer]

Seems to me Amtrak used to carry Second Class mail, i.e. magazines. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Pensyfan19]

What about personal mail, such as bills and cards to people living at certain towns along certain lines?

For instance, Frank lives at La Plata, MO, and has a friend, Bruce, at Los Angeles and they write to each other often via letters. Could it be possible for Amtrak (or any other mail service before Amtrak if I'm not mistaken) to have a mail car for letters to a certain town, let's say La Plata, to be stored in and dropped off at the station, and then delivered via the local mail to Frank's house?

[Gilbert B Norman]

Mr. Pennsy, the Railway Post Office, or RPO, actually did survive into the Amtrak era with Kearny-Wash PC-CR #3 and #4.

These trains had mail sorted on board by Postal employees.

The Amtrak SPF-WAS #12-13 "predominstely mail" handled storage cars only.

[R36 Combine Coach]

What about personal mail, such as bills and cards to people living at certain towns along certain lines?

For instance, Frank lives at La Plata, MO, and has a friend, Bruce, at Los Angeles and they write to each other often via letters. Could it be possible for Amtrak (or any other mail service before Amtrak if I'm not mistaken) to have a mail car for letters to a certain town, let's say La Plata, to be stored in and dropped off at the station, and then delivered via the local mail to Frank's house?

Legality would be in question. See Private Express Statutes, 18 USC 1693–1699.

[rohr turbo]

RPSA 70

It gave Amtrak the authority to run passenger service, not bulk mail service...

I don't think that's accurate. RPSA 70 section 305 states:
"
GENERAL POWERS OF THE CORPORATION
The Corporation is authorized to own, manage, operate, or contract for the operation of intercity trains operated for the purpose of providing modern, efficient, intercity transportation of passengers and to carry mail and express on such trains;
"
https://history.amtrak.com/archives/rai ... ct-of-1970

Moreover, the 1978 Act further INSTRUCTS the Postal Service to use Amtrak if Amtrak can transport mail at service levels and costs equal or better than other providers.

[David Benton]

Under Mr Warrington, Amtrak had its “Mail and Express” initiative ... and here’s your answer: The Class 1 railroads went to court, because Amtrak was outside RPSA ‘70, and taking their business. They got a permanent injunction.

I don't recall that happening , do you have a reference?
I thought it just died an economcs death , and buried by Gunn. Amtrak still has Amtrak express , to most stations with baggage handling.

[west point]

Are there still TGVs carrying mail in France ? I can see CA HSR carrying mail if the route is ever completed . That is 20+ years in the future. now if BOS - WASH ever gets to 4 hours then maybe some mail could be carried on Acela-1s at late evening.

[David Benton]

dedicated Emus still carry mail in england at 100mph or so

[wigwagfan]

I think you're all looking at the mail-by-train issue the wrong way.

There's absolutely no question that Amtrak could handle it. Seriously, how hard is it to load a baggage car?

The issue is the carriers, whether it's the USPS, or the private carriers such as UPS, FedEx, etc. They already have efficient, hub-and-spoke operations, designed around loading trailers or aircraft to hubs. How does Amtrak provide any value to them? It's just another complexity of having to update dozens of computer systems to figure out from Hub "A" which ZIP Codes should have stuff loaded onto a railcar/container, sort them so that they can be unloaded quickly at a station stop...and what if you don't have enough volume on a particular day to fill a container? Do you hold the parcels until the container is full, or send out an empty container? Or do you bulk-load - and are the host railroads/Amtrak willing to hold a train at a station while someone goes through a baggage car looking for the bags to off load?

From my experience with my employer in this field, they would not want this complexity at all. Not to mention that this is extremely time-sensitive, and being even two or three hours late means the inbounds are too late for delivery and have to sit around for another day (or, hold all your drivers for hours, paying them to play poker, or wasting time/gas having them do their early morning deliveries and then come back to the hub.) A train arriving at a town at 2:00 PM doesn't help when the drivers are all out busy delivering.

Maybe, if Amtrak offered a deal that the USPS/parcel carriers absolutely couldn't refuse, but Congress would certainly order an investigation if Amtrak engaged in a for-profit business that was losing money. At best, I could see the small town post offices using the railroad to aggregate their outgoing mail to a regional sort (i.e. small post offices in Montana loading mail onto Amtrak for shipment to the sorts in Minneapolis or Seattle) but what about the hundreds of post offices that aren't on an Amtrak line? You STILL have to have the truck infrastructure regardless, so why pay to duplicate service?

[Railjunkie]

I remember doing mail work at Buffalo Depew on the LSL. Not much maybe a palette or two. Every once in a while we would get stamps. Mostly second class mail. What pissed of the freight carriers is when we would get a roadrailer of freight somethings I remember sneakers razors industrial sand. Mail cars with perishables, I do recall switching those out in the Albany yard.

[Arborwayfan]

I've always wondered what would have happened with the program if Amtrak had gone to the host railroads with a plan to haul high-priority, high-priced freight in partnership with the railroads. The railroads could have solicited the freight and just added the Amtrak trains to their list of options for shipping. Amtrak could have moved the freight between certain cities, maybe as just one of the long-haul legs of the freight's journey. Everyone could have gotten a division of the rates paid. The railroads would have had a slightly bigger incentive to keep Amtrak trains on time and could have gotten a little more revenue by luring some customers away from trucks -- by essentially hiring Amtrak to provide unit intermodal-train schedules for carload freight. Some customers might have decided to move their less urgent freight from truck to ordinary freight trains once they had invested the time and money in rail loading facilities and procedures. And either everyone could have been happy or the whole thing could have been a money-losing waste of time and died a quick death, but at least Amtrak would not have seemed sneaky and the host railroads would not have cried foul.

As for the idea of a dedicated mail car carrying letters etc between two cities, isn't that one of the things Amtrak used to do? I remember seeing mail cars sitting in Penn Station, and maybe even being added to my train when I went through on the old Night Owl. A conductor told me they got first-class mail on that route. Same thing for Boston and Chicago, where the post offices were right there and had their own platforms. Until zip codes and central sorting facilities the mail system was a kind of web, with RPOs doing a lot of the intercity hauling and sorting a lot of the mail esp mail from smaller online towns. In the 60s the USPS moved to a more hub-and-spoke system with somewhat centralized sorting, and the RPOs no longer fit the logic of the system (NEC and Lake Winnepasuke aside). First-class mail started to go by truck for shorter distances and plane for longer ones, as it does today. (At least I think first-class mail from coast to coast and other long distances goes by plane. I suppose it could go from Indiana to Utah by ground in two days, which is about what it usually takes.) In the 80s and 90s Amtrak functioned as one of the intercity mail contractors between stations where the post office was set up to easily handle mail, just as if it was a truck. Since then, the Post Office has further centralized sorting and with it reduced the number of post offices that have direct shipments of mail between them. E.g. Terre Haute twelve years ago was a sorting center; our mail got postmarked here and sent out. I had a tour of the main PO and saw that a semi of mail was due in from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Now our mail is sorted in Indy, even if it's sent from Terre Haute to Terre Haute, because this is, or appears, cheaper. No more semis of mail from C-U to TH. Does that change make using Amtrak trains less convenient? No idea. It does mean even more mail on some routes between the major hubs, and rail is more attractive when quantities are larger. I am pretty sure some of the trucking contractors send their mail trailers on intermodal trains.

[R36 Combine Coach]

Go learn about southeastern Wisconsin's own "mixed train": the Lake Country. Everyone thought it would be the
next big thing, a short haul to Janesville connecting to the (stillborn) Skyline Connection between Philadelphia
and Chicago. After debuting with hope and promise, in the final months in 2001, the Lake Country was down to
just a single coach! There was no demand in SE Wisconsin for such a train, and most prospective clients already
had accounts with trucking companies.