'Letters by Night' Prestige Book

A Tribute to the Travelling Post Offices - 16 March 2004

Ten years before the introduction on the first postage stamp, the first mail was carried on a train running from Manchester to Liverpool. The date was 11 November 1830 and at this stage the mail was not sorted on the train. However, when the mail had been carried on horse-drawn mailcoaches, there were regular stops to permit a change of horses, and some of these stops were long enough for the sorting and exchange of mail. But using the train to convey the mail meant that no sorting was possible, and this upset the carefully derived timetables for the conveyance of the mails.

The first proper travelling post office (a converted horse box), in which the mail could be sorted, ran between Birmingham and Warrington on the Grand Junction Railway in January 1838. This was so successful that specially-designed railway wagons were produced, and the system expanded rapdily and by 1939 there were over 70 day and night TPOs running on the national network. In the late 19th century the TPOs were specially timed to coincide with the ships which carried foreign mail, the 'Irish Mail' running from London to Holyhead, which also carried mail for the USA from 1895, and the 'Continental' TPO from London to Dover. The South Western TPO ran to Southampton and the Portsmouth Sorting Carriage was particularly important for conveying mail to Queen Victoria when she was at Osborne on the Isle of Wight.

Whilst early TPOs consisted of one or two carriages added to ordinary passenger service trains, in 1855 'Special Mails' were introduced. These consisted of trains solely devoted to the carriage and sorting of mail, and were easily identified later by the bright red and yellow livery. Although most ran at night they could often be seen during the day in the sidings outside their terminus station awaiting the evening run. Even in the 1980s there were 42 TPOs employing 650 staff and sorting up to 1.25 million letters a night - 5% of all first class mail. The TPO crews were a special breed, many of them having worked on the system for virtually their whole employment with Royal Mail.

Despite the construction of a new road/rail interchange northwest of London, industrial action by railway workers, accidents, and the deterioration of the rail network (with enforced slow running and safety closures) combined to make the railways an unreliable service during the 1990s, forcing Royal Mail to rely increasingly on its road and inland air network. The South East, South Wales and East Anglian TPOs ran for the last time on 25 July 2003. Over the 8/9th January 2004 the North West, North East, Bristol-Penzance, Great Western, and Midland TPOs had their last runs in both directions, the final one to run being the Bristol-Penzance.

Prestige Book

Pane 1: as shown below, contains Scotland 68p & 2nd class stamps, the page illustration showing a steam train.
Pane 2: This pane is illustrated with an old picture of the interior of a TPO, with the 28p, 'E' and 42p stamps from the Classic Locomotives set issued in January.

Technical details:
The book is printed by De La Rue with all panes in gravure except pane 2 (Classic Locomotives) which is in lithography. The Scotland country stamps are in the revised 2003 style with white borders.

All images are taken from Royal Mail's Philatelic Bulletin and Postmark Bulletin, and are Copyright 2003 by Royal Mail.

Special Postmarks
These postmarks were available for the date of issue and all should be available on first day covers.

Ref FD411 Philatelic Bureau Official postmark Stamp Book Centenary	Ref FD412 London NW10 official postmark	Ref N8971 The Night Mail - The Travelling Post Office, York	Ref M8991 Letters by Night, New Street, Birmingham	Ref S8993 Royal Scot Class, LMS 6128 Meteor, Glasgow
Ref W9000 Letters by Night Bristol (wrongly captioned 'Final Journey of the TPO': this was in January)	Ref W9001 Letters by Night, Bristol	Ref N9019 The Travelling Post Office, Letters by Night Newcastle	Ref N9020 The Travelling Post Office, Letters by Night Crewe	Ref N9021 The Travelling Post Office, Letters by Night Carlisle
	<<<< Ref S9030 The Travelling Post Office, Letters by Night Edinburgh		<<<< Ref L9004 The Travelling Post Office, Letters by Night, Euston, London NW1