Fantasy: an alternative history: operationally combining the Post Office and the railways

[Tangent]

As a result of something else I have been working on, I have found myself led down a seductive sidetrack. I have imagined an alternative history of Britain. In this alternative history, the railways were not consolidated into the Big Four in the 1920s, but were nationalised. In this history, as a result, government saw great advantages in promoting closer working between the GPO and the new state railway organisation from the early 1920s onwards.

The vast majority of stations became Crown Post Offices, with many staff having dual railway and postal responsibilities. Sorting offices were moved to railway stations wherever this was convenient. Brake vans played a crucial role in carrying post and parcels around the country, with departments designed to organise optimal routing of post through a combination of special trains and ordinary services.

As a result, the combined GPO/railway service was able to offer some additional functions, such as overnight, such as secure cash transit, or a range of services similar to those that would be offered by Girobank in our timeline. These services developed from the 1920s to the 1950s.

But, had this happened, would it have made substantial differences to the way the railways would look like today? Would cuts in the post-war period have had the same effect, or would some routes with postal traffic have survived? Letter volumes obviously would have decreased this century, but would the combined organisation still be able to maintain a positon in long-distance small parcels, keeping road haulage to B2B and short-distance B2C traffic? If trains were still designed with parcel space, would that have made a difference to OPO rollout? Thoughts on questions such as these would be welcome.

 

[The Pelican]

How about an elaboration on the classic railway posthooks (where mail bags were picked up or dropped off by a hook beside the track and a net on the train) involving early post containterisation? Boxes for traffic between the top 10 destinations from each town already sorted early in the process. Perhaps combined with an early punched card system automating parts of the sorting for major flows.

Imagine a late night WCML london Manchester train running through a postal station south of Tamworth, a mechanical arm on a 500m long rail accelerating to 75 mph, an arm on the train pushing a Burton-On-Trent post container from London into the moving arm, then pulling it up to a kind of post overbridge like Bristol used to have, then sending it to a post office building in the corner of the tracks. Then another similar setup adds it onto the back of a Birmingham nottingham train...

I think branch line survival for postal reasons is less likely, unless you count the post office railway under London as a branch line! Most British branch lines went to fairly small places, and the ones which didn't tend to have survived. Of course, if post offices had generally been in station buildings, the closure of the branch might not have meant the station building or ticket office being knocked down.

 

[Sir Felix Pole]

The railways were a competitor to the GPO, of course, with their own very substantial parcel business - presumably you would combine them? In other respects the railways and the GPO co-operated very closely anyway - main sorting offices were often alongside stations with direct access to platforms, GPO staff loaded trains, TPO and other overnight services were run etc.

VIillage post offices were and are private businesses - I guess rural booking offices could have been closed and tickets issued on an agency basis.

I think the more interesting question is what the network would looked have looked like with nationalisation - would duplicate routes and hopeless branch lines been eliminated earlier or standardised motive power provided or railway-run bus services etc?

 

[Magdalia]

I have imagined an alternative history of Britain. In this alternative history, the railways were not consolidated into the Big Four in the 1920s, but were nationalised. In this history, as a result, government saw great advantages in promoting closer working between the GPO and the new state railway organisation from the early 1920s onwards.

It is very hard to see how this could have been made to work.

The General Post Office was a government department, the railways were companies. The Post Office only became a Public Corporation in 1969.

Both were huge bureaucracies with their own distinctive administrations. There were more than 20,000 post offices, many of them sub post offices, mostly operated by self employed shopkeepers.

In the days of paper based administration merging the two bureaucracies would have been practically impossible.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

It is very hard to see how this could have been made to work.

The General Post Office was a government department, the railways were companies. The Post Office only became a Public Corporation in 1969.

Both were huge bureaucracies with their own distinctive administrations. There were more than 20,000 post offices, many of them sub post offices, mostly operated by self employed shopkeepers.

In the days of paper based administration merging the two bureaucracies would have been practically impossible.

It's the definition of alternative history that you start from 'what would happen if things had been different from what did happen?'. But I do think that this one rather struggles to be plausible.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/synergy tells me that

the word is best known in the world of business. The notion that, when the right two companies merge, they'll produce a profitable synergy seemed exciting in the 1990s, when synergy became a trendy buzzword (even though it's actually been around since the 17th century).

But it seems to me that even if they didn't use the word, the government who it is suggested would have gone down this road would have noticed the lack of synergy between the GPO and the railways. Not only, as above, were they organisationally very different, but their lines of business didn't greatly overlap: as I understand it, the interwar railways were principally for the movement of passengers and bull freight, with parcels very much as a useful sideline, while the GPO was about parcels (overlap there), letters and (increasingly) telephones.

 

[Magdalia]

But it seems to me that even if they didn't use the word, the government who it is suggested would have gone down this road would have noticed the lack of synergy between the GPO and the railways.

Your quoted definition is telling:

The notion that, when the right two companies merge, they'll produce a profitable synergy seemed exciting in the 1990s, when synergy became a trendy buzzword (even though it's actually been around since the 17th century).

Although the word synergy had been around for a long time, synergy would not have been a concept recognised by government in the 1920s as relevant in the contexts of operating the railways and the General Post Office.

Until the 1980s/1990s company mergers were nearly all acquisitions not genuine mergers and were mainly about vertical integration and consolidation. Synergy in the context of company acquisitions and mergers seemed exciting in the 1990s because it was a new idea.

 

[Fawkes Cat]

Your quoted definition is telling:


Although the word synergy had been around for a long time, synergy would not have been a concept recognised by government in the 1920s as relevant in the contexts of operating the railways and the General Post Office.

Until the 1980s/1990s company mergers were nearly all acquisitions not genuine mergers and were mainly about vertical integration and consolidation. Synergy in the context of company acquisitions and mergers seemed exciting in the 1990s because it was a new idea.

But this alternative history proposition is in the context of the British government in the 1920s merging the railways with the GPO. For the Idea to get off the ground as alternative history, why would any government do that?

 

[Magdalia]

But this alternative history proposition is in the context of the British government in the 1920s merging the railways with the GPO. For the Idea to get off the ground as alternative history, why would any government do that?

I'd go a step further back, could any government have even thought of doing that?

 

[Backroom_boy]

Probably OT but in Switzerland the post office run many bus services but no railways that i know of

 

[Bletchleyite]

Probably OT but in Switzerland the post office run many bus services but no railways that i know of

That was a natural progression from post coaches carrying passengers and happened in many countries including the US, though most notably German speaking ones. Postauto doesn't carry post any more in most cases, though, it just remains part of Swiss Post because it always was and nobody has changed it. In Austria I believe it's actually part of the railway despite its name, it was called Bundesbus (federal bus) and used the OeBB logo in the 1990s.

Postbuses in the UK never progressed beyond the original concept (aside from getting diesel engines to replace horses) and pretty much died out when the second post stopped, as it then meant there weren't two journeys conveniently timed for going into town to do your shopping.

 

[Helvellyn]

As a result of something else I have been working on, I have found myself led down a seductive sidetrack. I have imagined an alternative history of Britain. In this alternative history, the railways were not consolidated into the Big Four in the 1920s, but were nationalised. In this history, as a result, government saw great advantages in promoting closer working between the GPO and the new state railway organisation from the early 1920s onwards.

The vast majority of stations became Crown Post Offices, with many staff having dual railway and postal responsibilities. Sorting offices were moved to railway stations wherever this was convenient. Brake vans played a crucial role in carrying post and parcels around the country, with departments designed to organise optimal routing of post through a combination of special trains and ordinary services.

As a result, the combined GPO/railway service was able to offer some additional functions, such as overnight, such as secure cash transit, or a range of services similar to those that would be offered by Girobank in our timeline. These services developed from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Firstly, many stations weren't conveniently located in city centres so moving the Crown Post Office to a station would have disadvantaged a lot of people - look at hostoric maps as well, not just based on how a town/city centre looks today.

Secondly, Crown Offices were often substantial buildings so finding room for everything they did at a station would have been a huge task. Booking Offices and Parcels Offices were often separate at major stations and then you'd be trying to accommodate a GPO facility as well.

Thirdly, don't forget that the GPO ran the phone networks as well. In a number of cases Exchanges were sited next to existing GPO facilities, so again trying to move things to stations would be disruptive.

Finally, I'd ask what would make the railways a special case to be be merged into the GPO? The GPO contracted shipping companies to operate many mail routes (hence RMS for Royal Mail Ship, as in RMS Titantic) and also airlines (look at British Airways aircraft today and they still carry a Royal Mail logo on the lower read fuselage because BA has the contract with Royal Mail; historically aircraft would be named with an RMA prefix, as many Imperial Airways aircraft were). The railways had lots of such Royal Mail contracts as well so I don't think they were a special case that would have needed the GPO to run them compared to ships and aircraft.

 

[The Pelican]

Ironically, the kind of country which this would have made the most sense in would have been a country where railways were built by the state, and where post and railways were two of the major state bureaucracies. It looks like the Austro-Hungarian Bosnia Railway was like this, for example. Similarly, the British state funded railway construction in various colonies, such as Canada.