MailTrain

[Lawman]

Folks,
l have recently seen the Mail Train a few times passing Motherwell in the wee small hours.Do Royal Mail still use this service.l thought they had withdrawn it.Anyone shed any light?

 

[Hydro]

The mail trains still run, albeit on a very reduced scale, using class 325 EMU postal units on the WCML. The Travelling Post Offices, that sorted the mail on the move, were stopped in 2004 IIRC.

 

[The Engineer]

There's a goodly service using the Class 325's serving Wembley, Warrington and Shieldmuir. Normally operating as 12-cars. I am sure someone in the know can tell us how many trains a day!

 

[Bittern]

Not as fun with the EMUs as seeing a 47 thundering through Motherwell with the mail train.

 

[Hydro]

There used to be mails and TPO's everywhere. The only one I caught (because it went past my house) was the Willesden - Dover. It was a proper TPO and it was cool to see it flying through the local station with a 73 providing huge blue/white arcs when it hit the con rail gaps under full power.

 

[142094]

Good memories of the 47s and RES/PO stock at Newcastle and Heaton stabiling lines on the way to school. Times change unfortunately. I've always wondered if the cost savings between train and lorry have been that much, plus when you think of the price of diesel these days it might make more economic sense to start sending mail by train again.

 

[deltic1989]

Taking information from Top Gear (bit risky I know) the Royal Mail seem to have almost ditched the train in favour of moving mail north by air. AFAIK there are still a few mail trains but most of it seems to go on an aeroplane now, I do fail to see how this saves money, but I can understand the time saving element of it.

 

[flymo]

A few few years ago I remember seeing the TPO's in Newcastle Central at about 8:30pm or so. This was shown as 1A40 on the platform monitors. You could even post a first class letter through a letter box type opening on the side of one (or more) of the carriages. Wonder what post mark you would get?

 

[Jonny]

Apparently there was an issue with VAT; the train company has to charge it to Royal Mail. Normally this wouldn't be a problem to another business as this would be reclaimable "input VAT" (as long as they are VAT registered) but apparently Royal Mail can't.

 

[Dolive22]

Surely being government owned, if it was making the government a net loss by switching to a less efficient system, they could reach an understanding with HM Treasury? I know there would be no wiggle room at the train company or HMRC (I've tried to persaude accountants before to accept a more favourable interpretation, no luck), but if it saves taxpayer money wouldn't HMT agree to reimburse it?

 

[sprinterguy]

A few few years ago I remember seeing the TPO's in Newcastle Central at about 8:30pm or so. This was shown as 1A40 on the platform monitors. You could even post a first class letter through a letter box type opening on the side of one (or more) of the carriages. Wonder what post mark you would get?

Each TPO train had its’ own individual post mark (I can’t remember whether I found that out in a thread on here or in an old magazine article), and many of the TPOs were named trains.

EWS held the contract to operate the extensive TPO and parcels trains network until Royal Mail withdrew its’ support for a rail-based service in January 2004, having inherited the Royal Mail contracts from Rail Express Systems, which was the 1991 rebranding of BRs’ parcels sector. I’m sure there was a Low Fell to either Willesden or Bristol parcels train that survived beyond this date, operated by EWS into 2004.

A limited Royal Mail rail service has since been resurrected by GBRf (In early 2005), using the sixteen Class 325 Electric Postal Units (Initially hauled by class 87 locos but now once again getting around under their own steam) between, as others have said, Willesden (Wembley), Warrington and Sheildmuir (Glasgow), where there are dedicated Royal Mail terminals. I think there are three trains a day. During busy periods, additional trains can be run over the West Coast route, and there have been occasional runs between Low Fell (Newcastle) and Willesden as required on the ECML. Shortly before Christmas during the period of snow disruption, Royal Mail also used Eddie Stobart containers conveyed on the Daventry-Mossend block container train to carry mail for a period of a week, due to difficulties in organising its’ fleet of lorries and drivers’ rosters.
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Taking information from Top Gear (bit risky I know) the Royal Mail seem to have almost ditched the train in favour of moving mail north by air. AFAIK there are still a few mail trains but most of it seems to go on an aeroplane now, I do fail to see how this saves money, but I can understand the time saving element of it.

Royal Mail uses its’ fleet of planes for carrying first class mail only on domestic flows. I used to know some figures for the comparative costs of Royal Mails’ planes, trains and lorries per journey, but I’ve unfortunately forgotten now.

 

[BigVince76]

I have seen the Class 325 units passing Stoke-On-Trent in the morning, is this a regular route?

 

[33056]

I have seen the Class 325 units passing Stoke-On-Trent in the morning, is this a regular route?

Yes, but only for the 0640 from Willesden to Warrington; the afternoon departure from Willesden and the two "up" workings are all routed via Stafford.

 

[dcmbarton]

We see one of the mail trains passing Lichfield TV travelling south on the WCML every night at about 8:45pm.

 

[Grumpy]

It's not necessarily a matter of cost. Air was always quicker than rail for the long distance services, and road quicker (and cheaper) for the shorter ones. Royal Mail invested millions in the railnet project (new EMU's and terminals) to give it flexibility and spread risk, even though an air/road combination would have been cheaper.
Unfortunately shortly after Railnet was introduced we had the Hatfield accident and Railtrack subsequently going into panic mode, imposing speed limits and shutting tracks at night to carry out relaying. Consequently the mail train service punctuality went to pot, hitting Royal Mail's own quality of service. The attitude of EWS and Railtrack was pretty unsupportive so Royal Mail Management concluded that if the rail service couldn't be run reliably they might as well have the savings.
I think the Willesden-Shieldmuir service now only carries non urgent traffic