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The Post Office Railway (
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The Post Office Railway
Railways and the General Post Office (GPO) have had a long relationship stemming back to the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. As with other traffic, street congestion caused severe problems with postal deliveries especially when transferring bulk mail from one sorting off ice to another, so the post office decided it needed some way to speed up the delivery of mails. In 1855, the GPO commisioned engineers to report on a means to get the mails from the General Post Office (London London 10th January 1863 . This tube railway was built by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company formed in 1859 and as the company's title suggests was built to employ atmopheric pressure in one direction with compressed air in the other. A previous proposal by the company owners had been for an elevated railway using atmospheric propulsion as used on the London & Croydon Railway and Brunel's South Devon Railway, this time using two car trains though this idea had never gone ahead. The tube was to start from underneath Platform 1 of the LNWR Euston station 1/3rd of a mile to the Northern District Post Office in Eversholt Street "for the more speedy and convenient circulation of despatches and parcels". The company had previously been interested in building The company's ultimate aim to transport general goods on the new tube railway as well the railway not only linking all of the main line railway termini and large sorting offices but also market places around the city, the act allowing the company to 'Open the streets and lay down tubes' receiving Royal Consent on 13th August 1859. to try the system out a test line was built at the Soho works of Boulton and Watt in Birmingham the first full scale experiment being on land owned by the Southwark & Vauxhall Waterworks and the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway in Battersea, London. The 2 foot 9 inches x 2 feet 5 inches tube was laid on the surface with a length of 452Yards consisting of curves and gradients of 300 foot radius and 1 in 22 respectively the rails laid 2 feet apart. To provide the propulsion a 30hp steam engine was erected to drive a 21 feet diameter fan the 3 ton cars having vulcanised rubber flaps running along the tubes internal diameter to create the required air tight seal, with their reaching speeds up to 40mph with an air pressure of 1 to 6 lb per Square inch.
Seeing the benefits already achieved and with the aim of building a network of connecting tube lines the company released a prospectus to raise the required funds for more tubes, stating that the tubes would run between "points so important that it is unnecessary to dwell upon the magnitude of the traffic that must naturally arise between them" one proposal being for a tube connecting Camden Town LNWR station with the LNWR termini at Euston. The resulting 1 1/2 mile route ran from Euston to Holborn opening in October 1865 this time the cars running in tubes of 4 feet 6 inch width and 4 feet high with propulsion provided by two horizontal steam pumping engines with 24 inch cylinders, three boilers, and a 22 ft diameter fan working at 150 RPM the air pressure and vacuum being around 5 oz/sq in the cars moving at around 17 mph though there were problems with leakage reducing the actual air power provided the tube. At the same time as the tube from Euston to Holborn was opened another was underway from Holborn to the Central Post Office at Cheapside with another tube 3/8th of a mile long from Holborn to Hatton Garden built by 1866, when a financial 'crisis' hit the company construction of the line ceasing, this was partly down to the GPO which in 1860 was more than willing to use the new railway between Euston and the Northern District Office, but in the end the GPO refused to use the new line from Euston to Hatton Garden, resulting in the company losing a lot of money in the project. Construction was re-started in 1868 and completed as far as the London Chief Office in St Martins Le Grand by 1869 this new terminus being 1658 yards from Holborn and 4738 yards from Euston. The cars taking 17 minutes to cover the journey form the Central Post Office and reaching speeds up to 60 mph the tube having two gradients both of 1 in 15 to take the tube over the Fleet valley (route of the underground river Fleet which caused problems by frequently flooding the tunnels). In an effort to raise money and to break the GPO's Monopoly on parcels traffic the company opened the railway to public use in 1872 and stopped paying rental to the GPO for its station site at the General Post Office. By 1874 the GPO decided that it would try the railway though this only lasted until the October of that year when the GPO announced it saw no beneft to the railway which saved only 4 minutes on the journey time of the mail and with the lack of public use the system was abandoned the company applying for liquidation in 1875 though it was not until 7th March 1882 that it was finally wrapped up. Over the next 20 years consideration was given by the GPO for a railway to be built using electric power seeing the company re-formed in 1895 in the hope that the old tunnels would be used for the new railway. The proposals for an electric railway were to see a whole new system of tunnels opened by the GPO instead. The GPO purchased the former tube tunnels in 1921 to lay telephone cables through but with a gas pocket forming in one of the disused tunnels in 1928 an explosion shook High Holborn resulting in the other disused tunnels being filled in or ventilated.
In 1909, a GPO Departmental committee was formed to investigate new ways of carrying the mail throughLondon Liverpool Street King Edward Building 15th August 1913 the Act specifying that the Railway had to be built within a period not exceeding 5 years from the date of the Act receiving Royal Assent with the overall cost to be no more than 1 Million pounds. In 1914, the contract for the railways construction was given to John Mowlem & Company (now part of Carillion Rail as of 2006). Work starting on the tunnels in 1915 with shafts dug along the proposed route the tunnels dug mostly through London Clay using the Greathead shield principle though hand mining was employed to build the connecting tunnels at stations. By May 1927, half of the railway was complete and able to be used for staff training the remainder completed by the December of that year.
One single running tunnel containing the two running lines was built 70 feet deep though some variations to this height were required to avoid the other underground railways, sewers and other underground amenities and lined with 20 inch wide steel segments bolted together. On the approach to stations, which are underneath sorting offices, the tunnel splits in to two separate tunnels 7 feet in diameter joining one large station tunnel of 21 feet 2 1/2 inches or 25 feet in diameter the two platforms connected by cross passages. The layout of the station varies between any two as required most having reversing loops or sidings withKing Edward Building British Museum King Lever Key ' was used to unlock the siding when the locomotive was required.
The first cars had a fixed wheelbase of 7 feet 3 inches long and had large centre compartments 4 feet 6 inches in length and 2 feet 5 inches wide for mailbag stowage and an overall height of 3 feet 7 inches a smaller compartment 2 feet high sited over the inner wheels of the four-wheel bogies to use all available space. The initial 90 cars, provided by English Electric, ran in three car formations. These providing the service between 1928 and 1929 when it was decided that the original cars would have to be replaced or added to, as they had soon been found to be impractical and expensive to run due to their wheelbase causing rapid wheel and rail wear. With an increase in traffic that followed the opening of the railway some continuing in use until 1931. By this time, the cars had operated 11,250,000 miles with an average of 125,000 miles per car or 1,250,000 miles per year. The new cars introduced from 1930 had 4 feet long bogie wheelbases each steel framed bogie having a motor and one powered axle with wheels of 24 inch diameter and two pony wheels under the car 12 inches in diameter gears on the axle fitting with a pinion on the electric motor giving transmission. Each bogie was identical with a 'king pin' fitting in to a hole in each end of the centre body allowing the rotation of the bogie as well as being able to carry the load on the 24 inch wheel set. The motor also partly suspended on the driving axle each car having two collector shoes so to be able to bridge gaps in the Power rail. From the collector shoes current passed through a series of resistors, preventing the motors surging when the current was applied and the car stationary, buffers provided to stop short-circuiting between areas of different voltage. Braking was achieved by a solenoid mechanically connected to the braking system and when energised the solenoid pulls the brakes away from the wheels the brakes being applied by springs. A three-position reverser allows the car to be moved backwards or forwards with a centre position for neutral. The brakes have a mechanical interlock that allows them to be wound off when there is no electrical current, the return current from the motors passing back through the axle and in to the running rail not used for the track circuiting. There were early problems with derailments on sharp curves and points and once all of the older cars were, withdrawn track modifications took place. The cars had a centre compartment able to hold four containers at a time, rolled on or off the car upon its arrival at the station. To allow this the centre compartment was at platform height of 15 inches above rail level. The 50 new cars again by English Electric were of an improved design and had the capacity of 150 of the older ones, though were restricted in length to allow minimum rail and wheel wear and tractive effort especially with the tight curves and steep gradients on the route as well as to fit the station berths. The parts from the old cars were also used on some of the new ones o save on cost as most of the components were well within their life expiry and by 1936 another 10 new cars were added due to a further increase in traffic. With the introduction of the new cars, there was a 38.5% reduction in power usage with a reduction in track wear as well with the original batch of new cars having already operated nearly 10,500,000 miles with an average of 200,000 miles per car. The three battery locomotives were used for work, rescue trains, and were able to haul two of the cars along the full length of the line at 12mph one locomotive stationed at Paddington, one atMount Pleasant Mount Pleasant
During WW2 the railway saw a loss of staff due to the conscription resulting in less operating hours through the day some of the stations used as dormitories for staff. The only direct damage from bombs being in 1943-1944 causing the flooding of Mount Pleasant station the building above having taken a direct hit, the longest period of disruption being 3 weeks when the Western Parcels Office station closed with its traffic taken by road instead. Though several extensions had been proposed for the railway over the years only one deviation was ever built to serve the new West London Letter Office a 450-yard deviation being built from the original tunnel, which was later used for storage, to serve a new station under the new sorting office in 1965. This new station was unique to the railway being constructed as part of the main structure and was sited in the sub-basement. The height of the railways use was in 1962 that year also seeing the introduction of two experimental cars from English Electric in an attempt to speed up operations though only one of these was in service by the lines closure in 1993. The actual introduction of new stock did not take place until the late 1970's with 34 new cars ordered from Greenwood & Batley of Leeds the order built jointly with the Hunslet engine Co. also of Leeds the first cars arriving in 1980 the last arriving in 1982. At that time the old cars were put up for sale with car 809 sold to the National Railway Museum in York and car 807 going to the Science Museum in Kensington, car 803 went to the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre, with car 808 going to the Diesel and Electric group, for display at Minehead on the West Somerset Railway, before transferring to the Chalk pit museum in Sussex. By 1993 16 of the 1930's cars were still in use bringing the operating fleet to 50 cars with another 25 stored out of use. A survey in 1986 demonstrated that the railway could transport mails underLondon Mount Pleasant Mount Pleasant
The mid 1990's saw several changes made to the way mails were sorted inLondon Mount Pleasant King Edward Building London Feltham , and Bromley-by-Bow, which would draw postal sorting away from the city. This resulted in less traffic for the railway seeing another station closing in the march of 2003. In 2002 Mail Rail employed 76 full time staff at the four stations remaining at East London Mail Centre (Whitechapel, due to close in March 2003 with all sorting moved to the 38 million pound site at Bromley by Bow), London Central (Mount Pleasant, at Farringdon which is Europe's largest mail centre), West End Delivery Office (Rathbone Place, off Oxford Street), and London West Mail Centre (Paddington). By this time Royal Mail was stating that the railway cost 5 times more to move mails than it did by road and compared with the companies loss of 1.2 million pounds per day the keeping of the railway was impractical. Royal Mail announced on 7th November 2002 that if it could not receive financial backing for the system it would have to close as it preferred to send mail by road instead, Royal Mail entered discussions with the Communication workers Union on the matter. They also wanted to talk to any organisation whether business or heritage about uses for the railway though if no practical offers were forthcoming the railway was to be mothballed rather than totally shut down. On 30th May 2003 , the last train operated along what remained of the line with the power was finally turned off, awaiting some practical usage for the railway to be suggested.
The GPO were willing to use the new tube line stating in 1860 that "in the event of their scheme being successfully completed and brought into operation, the Post Office will be quite willing to consider the question of extending to the Mail Service any advantages which the Company's plans are capable of affording". The actual line was 600yds long and ran from Euston to the Northern District Sorting Office, Eversholt Street, using 30 inch diameter tube and a track gauge of 3 feet 8 inches employing similar technology to that employed at the test site in Battersea operations starting on 20th February 1863 with a one car train carrying 35 mail bags taking one minute to do the journey at twice the speed of the road carts on a good day, the service running 13 times a day. Naturally the railway saw a lot of interest and one writer in the April issue of 'The Living Age, Volume 77, Issue 984' reporting:
"Within the modest brick shed near the bottom of Euston Square, there is the mouth of the tube, and there are the travelling trucks, ready to be thrust into it; and as we look, a bell rings at some distance up the rail - this is a signal that a mail-train has arrived at the Camden station, and that it will speedily be at Euston Square. At this signal we hear a shovel of coke thrown into a furnace, a small steam-enging begins to beat swiftly, and a whirring sound is heard within a great iron case which is noticed on the side of the shed. This, we are informed, is the pneumatic wheel - the mouth, in fact, which is to propel or draw the trucks through the tube. The wheel is twenty-one feet in diameter, and is composed of two discs of iron, not placed quite parallel to each other, but tapering off from the axis to periphery. These discs are braced together by spoke-like partitions, and these partitions communicate with an opening for the entrance of air about the axis. As this wheel rapidly revolves, the air is sucked in at its centre, and thrown off in a perfect gale at its open rim or edge. This gale is not allowed to disperse itself, however, but when any work has to be done, is confined within a paddle-box, and allowed to pass out at the will of the engineer through a pipe in connection with the great pneumatic despatch tube. In like manner, the air that is sucked in at the axle is all conducted from the despatch-tube by a similar pipe. Here, then, we have the means of pulling or pushing the travelling carriages along their subterranean road, and as we speak we see it in operation: for a mail-guard opens a door, throws in two or three mail-bags just snatched out of the guard's van as it rolls into the [mainline] station, the iron carriages are shoved into the tube, the air-tight door at its mouth is closed, and the engineer, with a turn of a lever, directs a torrent of air upon them, and we hear them rumbling off on their subterranean journey at a rate, we are informed, of twenty miles an hour. Ere we have done looking and wondering, we notice that a water gauge, on which the eye of the engineer has been fixed, becomes depressed at one arm and elevated at another. "It has arrived" he says; and almost ere he has said it, a bell connected with an electric telegraph warns him that the attendant at the other end of the tube is about to thrust the carriage into the tube on its return journey. It has been pushed along, as we have said, by the pressure of air thrown out by the wheel, but it has to be pulled back by suction; the value of the suction-pipe, in the connection with the centre of the disc, is accordingly opened, and speedily we hear a hollow rumbling, and out shoots the carriage, ready once more for fresh bags."Seeing the benefits already achieved and with the aim of building a network of connecting tube lines the company released a prospectus to raise the required funds for more tubes, stating that the tubes would run between "points so important that it is unnecessary to dwell upon the magnitude of the traffic that must naturally arise between them" one proposal being for a tube connecting Camden Town LNWR station with the LNWR termini at Euston. The resulting 1 1/2 mile route ran from Euston to Holborn opening in October 1865 this time the cars running in tubes of 4 feet 6 inch width and 4 feet high with propulsion provided by two horizontal steam pumping engines with 24 inch cylinders, three boilers, and a 22 ft diameter fan working at 150 RPM the air pressure and vacuum being around 5 oz/sq in the cars moving at around 17 mph though there were problems with leakage reducing the actual air power provided the tube. At the same time as the tube from Euston to Holborn was opened another was underway from Holborn to the Central Post Office at Cheapside with another tube 3/8th of a mile long from Holborn to Hatton Garden built by 1866, when a financial 'crisis' hit the company construction of the line ceasing, this was partly down to the GPO which in 1860 was more than willing to use the new railway between Euston and the Northern District Office, but in the end the GPO refused to use the new line from Euston to Hatton Garden, resulting in the company losing a lot of money in the project. Construction was re-started in 1868 and completed as far as the London Chief Office in St Martins Le Grand by 1869 this new terminus being 1658 yards from Holborn and 4738 yards from Euston. The cars taking 17 minutes to cover the journey form the Central Post Office and reaching speeds up to 60 mph the tube having two gradients both of 1 in 15 to take the tube over the Fleet valley (route of the underground river Fleet which caused problems by frequently flooding the tunnels). In an effort to raise money and to break the GPO's Monopoly on parcels traffic the company opened the railway to public use in 1872 and stopped paying rental to the GPO for its station site at the General Post Office. By 1874 the GPO decided that it would try the railway though this only lasted until the October of that year when the GPO announced it saw no beneft to the railway which saved only 4 minutes on the journey time of the mail and with the lack of public use the system was abandoned the company applying for liquidation in 1875 though it was not until 7th March 1882 that it was finally wrapped up. Over the next 20 years consideration was given by the GPO for a railway to be built using electric power seeing the company re-formed in 1895 in the hope that the old tunnels would be used for the new railway. The proposals for an electric railway were to see a whole new system of tunnels opened by the GPO instead. The GPO purchased the former tube tunnels in 1921 to lay telephone cables through but with a gas pocket forming in one of the disused tunnels in 1928 an explosion shook High Holborn resulting in the other disused tunnels being filled in or ventilated.
In 1909, a GPO Departmental committee was formed to investigate new ways of carrying the mail through
One single running tunnel containing the two running lines was built 70 feet deep though some variations to this height were required to avoid the other underground railways, sewers and other underground amenities and lined with 20 inch wide steel segments bolted together. On the approach to stations, which are underneath sorting offices, the tunnel splits in to two separate tunnels 7 feet in diameter joining one large station tunnel of 21 feet 2 1/2 inches or 25 feet in diameter the two platforms connected by cross passages. The layout of the station varies between any two as required most having reversing loops or sidings with
The first cars had a fixed wheelbase of 7 feet 3 inches long and had large centre compartments 4 feet 6 inches in length and 2 feet 5 inches wide for mailbag stowage and an overall height of 3 feet 7 inches a smaller compartment 2 feet high sited over the inner wheels of the four-wheel bogies to use all available space. The initial 90 cars, provided by English Electric, ran in three car formations. These providing the service between 1928 and 1929 when it was decided that the original cars would have to be replaced or added to, as they had soon been found to be impractical and expensive to run due to their wheelbase causing rapid wheel and rail wear. With an increase in traffic that followed the opening of the railway some continuing in use until 1931. By this time, the cars had operated 11,250,000 miles with an average of 125,000 miles per car or 1,250,000 miles per year. The new cars introduced from 1930 had 4 feet long bogie wheelbases each steel framed bogie having a motor and one powered axle with wheels of 24 inch diameter and two pony wheels under the car 12 inches in diameter gears on the axle fitting with a pinion on the electric motor giving transmission. Each bogie was identical with a 'king pin' fitting in to a hole in each end of the centre body allowing the rotation of the bogie as well as being able to carry the load on the 24 inch wheel set. The motor also partly suspended on the driving axle each car having two collector shoes so to be able to bridge gaps in the Power rail. From the collector shoes current passed through a series of resistors, preventing the motors surging when the current was applied and the car stationary, buffers provided to stop short-circuiting between areas of different voltage. Braking was achieved by a solenoid mechanically connected to the braking system and when energised the solenoid pulls the brakes away from the wheels the brakes being applied by springs. A three-position reverser allows the car to be moved backwards or forwards with a centre position for neutral. The brakes have a mechanical interlock that allows them to be wound off when there is no electrical current, the return current from the motors passing back through the axle and in to the running rail not used for the track circuiting. There were early problems with derailments on sharp curves and points and once all of the older cars were, withdrawn track modifications took place. The cars had a centre compartment able to hold four containers at a time, rolled on or off the car upon its arrival at the station. To allow this the centre compartment was at platform height of 15 inches above rail level. The 50 new cars again by English Electric were of an improved design and had the capacity of 150 of the older ones, though were restricted in length to allow minimum rail and wheel wear and tractive effort especially with the tight curves and steep gradients on the route as well as to fit the station berths. The parts from the old cars were also used on some of the new ones o save on cost as most of the components were well within their life expiry and by 1936 another 10 new cars were added due to a further increase in traffic. With the introduction of the new cars, there was a 38.5% reduction in power usage with a reduction in track wear as well with the original batch of new cars having already operated nearly 10,500,000 miles with an average of 200,000 miles per car. The three battery locomotives were used for work, rescue trains, and were able to haul two of the cars along the full length of the line at 12mph one locomotive stationed at Paddington, one at
During WW2 the railway saw a loss of staff due to the conscription resulting in less operating hours through the day some of the stations used as dormitories for staff. The only direct damage from bombs being in 1943-1944 causing the flooding of Mount Pleasant station the building above having taken a direct hit, the longest period of disruption being 3 weeks when the Western Parcels Office station closed with its traffic taken by road instead. Though several extensions had been proposed for the railway over the years only one deviation was ever built to serve the new West London Letter Office a 450-yard deviation being built from the original tunnel, which was later used for storage, to serve a new station under the new sorting office in 1965. This new station was unique to the railway being constructed as part of the main structure and was sited in the sub-basement. The height of the railways use was in 1962 that year also seeing the introduction of two experimental cars from English Electric in an attempt to speed up operations though only one of these was in service by the lines closure in 1993. The actual introduction of new stock did not take place until the late 1970's with 34 new cars ordered from Greenwood & Batley of Leeds the order built jointly with the Hunslet engine Co. also of Leeds the first cars arriving in 1980 the last arriving in 1982. At that time the old cars were put up for sale with car 809 sold to the National Railway Museum in York and car 807 going to the Science Museum in Kensington, car 803 went to the Buckinghamshire Railway Centre, with car 808 going to the Diesel and Electric group, for display at Minehead on the West Somerset Railway, before transferring to the Chalk pit museum in Sussex. By 1993 16 of the 1930's cars were still in use bringing the operating fleet to 50 cars with another 25 stored out of use. A survey in 1986 demonstrated that the railway could transport mails under
The mid 1990's saw several changes made to the way mails were sorted in