Athearn Railroad Mail Car - REA Coach ~ Baltimore & Ohio ~ # 213

Description: To see all our listings visit: Ika's Train Store On July 7, 1838 Congress authorized the railroad industry to handle all such parcels and shipments. During the peak years 9,000 trains carried mail via 200,000 route miles. There were 30,000 clerks employed aboard these RPO cars which earned $50 million in gross revenues. At that time Congress stipulated that all railroads were postal routes (there was less than 3,000 miles of track in operation in 1838). Interestingly, this authorization occurred just a decade after the creation of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, our country's first common-carrier railroad. Not until 1862 was the Railway Post Office setup, which during that time consisted essentially of using converted baggage cars to store and sort mail.Two years after the creation of the RPO its first route was inaugurated between Chicago and Clinton, Iowa and by 1869 an official agency, the Railway Mail Service was created to oversee the movement and handling of mail aboard trains. With coordinated routing and expedited service provided by passenger trains, mail by rail could quickly reach its intended destination and was very efficient. When the United States Railway Administration nationalized the railroads during World War I it did the same for express services, creating the American Railway Express Company on June 30, 1918. The Railway Express Agency was a non-profit corporation owned by several railroads, all of which held various levels of stock in the company and was a quasi-governmental entity it was able to share space with the RPO. The first dedicated RPO car was designed by Charles Harrison. Basically, it was a retrofitted baggage car as the interior featured hinged iron (later steel) railings that could hold mail bags for easy reach and sorting. Since the Railway Post Office operated as an express service on railroads it almost always was included in a passenger train's head-end equipment. When the government pulled its mail contracts in the late 1960s the purpose of the RPO ended and the car slowly disappeared nationwide. Pullman-Standard entered the streamlined era in 1933 with three experimental lightweight cars. Union Pacific’s three-unit articulated streamliner M-10000 of 1934 is generally considered to be Pullman-Standard’s first “real” streamliner. It was followed later that year by UP M-10001, which included sleeping cars. Note #1: I will combine shipping for multiple items. Please purchase the items but do *NOT* pay. I will review and calculate shipping as close as to what I have to pay. I will then forward an invoice with the adjusted shipping. If you do pay ahead of this recalculation I will refund the shipping difference as part of preparing the items for shipment. Note #2: I want you to be happy with your purchase and would appreciate you leaving positive feedback. In the event you are not, please contact me immediately before leaving feedback so we may resolve it. Thank you. Note #3: If not previously stated item(s) come from a smoke-free environment with cats. Note #4: This is a Grandma & Grandpa shop. We have a 4 business day shipping window (this means that if you pay for your order on a Friday it may not get shipping until the following Thursday). We do combine shipping especially when we are asked about it.If you want combined shipping, please purchase all your items in one order. If you purchase items in more than one order, send us a message so that we know about the additional items and box the orders together. (When items are bought in multiple orders, we do not always notice they were bought by the same person unless we are notified by the buyer.) We refund extra shipping charges when combined shipping is requested. If we ship items separately, we do not issue a shipping refund.For our International customers: YES!! we do combine shipping. The most economical way for you to buy multiple items from us is for you to send us a list of the items you want to buy. Do not purchase them as they are listed!! (This leads to higher than necessary fees & shipping.) Send us a complete list of all the items you want. Then we will cancel the listings for the items and turn them into a special listing just for you (We'll send you the listing named before making it active). It will have your full purchase with the correct shipping box size and weight. This saves you on the international fees & shipping.

Price: 16 USD

Location: London, Ohio

End Time: 2024-12-12T22:46:04.000Z

Shipping Cost: N/A USD