# Amtrak Mail and Express future



## CHamilton

USPS OIG: Suitability of Rail Transportation Suggest It Is Time To Use Rail Once Again



> Once upon a time, the United States Postal Service enjoyed a successful relationship with the nation’s railroads. The California State Railroad Museum Foundation reminds us of the once-speeding postal trains, rather than today’s trucks, where post office workers sorted letters during the trip. Moreover, they did so in “swaying cars filled with canvas bags and wooden pigeon holes.” That must have been fun.
> 
> Perhaps a change back to rail and train is once again a practical venture. Reasons to encourage rail integration were laid out in a recent report by the Postal Service’s Inspector General.
> 
> Bill McAllister for Stamp News and Coin World recently wrote on the new report, Suitability of Rail Transportation — New Jersey Network Distribution Center, and a dialog that followed.
> 
> The report supports the argument that, in this case, the New Jersey mail service could save about $10.8 million a year choosing to use rail instead of long-distance trucking. The information in IG’s report seems solid. However, arguments from postal management ensued. McAllister continued with some back-and-forth points, noting that it is budget numbers that “speak the loudest.”


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## Palmland

When you see trailers/containers with Schneider and J.B. Hunt trucking on their sides but are moving on BNSF Transcon trains, you know there is something to the argument that rail vs long hauling trucking is no contest as to the most economical. You can be sure that if mail does return to the rails, you won't find them on the likes of the Southwest Chief. Rather it will be USPS trailers sitting next to those from FedEX and UPS on those hotshot intermodal trains.


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## KmH

I drove an over-the-road truck from 1997 to 2005.

I sometimes pulled trailers full of mail for the USPS.
One of those times was a short trip assignment of 250 or so miles from the St. Louis area to near Chicago.

I hooked my tractor up to the trailer I was assigned to pull and went to the back of the trailer to put their seal on the trailer doors.
I opened the trailer doors and looked in wanting to make sure the load was secured properly.
The trailer was empty.

So I went back to the USPS yard office to make sure I had the right trailer number.
They verified that that was indeed the trailer they wanted me to pull, and they verified they knew is was an empty trailer.
They said they didn't want to cancel the order, and I pulled the empty trailer to Chicago.

Upon arrival at the Chicago end when they told me to back up to the dock I said, "OK. But why? The trailer is empty."
That was news to them and they came outside, broke the seal, opened the doors and were as astonished as I had been back at the start of the trip.

In the summer I am the Docent for the historic Edel Blacksmith Shop in Haverhill, IA.
Haverhill, IA (and a lot of other small towns) came to be because the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (The Milwaukee Road) built a depot there.

During the time the blacksmith shop operated (1883 to 1940) the USPS used mail cars on the railroads to sort and distribute a lot of the mail in the US.

The USPS stopped using the railroads as the Interstate Highway System was built in the late '50s early 60's and as they started using mail sorting machines at processing and distribution centers.

Up to that point the USPS helped pay for non-profitable long distance passenger trains.


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## the_traveler

I would mind sharing the SWC with the USPS. After all, TPS shares a bedroom wall with USPS - and my other home also does!


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## MikefromCrete

any mail would be moved in high priority container freight trains, not on Amtrak LD trains.


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## the_traveler

Not this *male*!


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## neroden

Taking the mail off the trains was an incredibly short-sighted decision by mismanagement at the Postal Service. They did this *after* UPS and FedEx were already starting to put large volumes of parcel traffic onto the rails.


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## Clifford C. Clavin, Jr

> Taking the mail off the trains was an incredibly short-sighted decision by mismanagement at the Postal Service





> The information in IG’s report seems solid. However, arguments from postal management ensued.


Yep.

Some things NEVER change.


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## VentureForth

This could happen - but perhaps only for first class mail. I can't imagine iPads, laptops, etc., handling mail hooks out of RPOs very well! 

Really just kidding about that. But if they don't include parcels, they should probably not have to worry about the Railroads crying foul on unfair competition.


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## philabos

The IG has been proposing this for years. The USPS will just continue to ignore the recommendation.


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## StriderGDM

VentureForth said:


> This could happen - but perhaps only for first class mail. I can't imagine iPads, laptops, etc., handling mail hooks out of RPOs very well!
> 
> Really just kidding about that. But if they don't include parcels, they should probably not have to worry about the Railroads crying foul on unfair competition.


I suspect in this case the government would have a strong argument based on the Postal powers in the Constitution.


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## FriskyFL

What about femail?


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## andersone

I seem to remember a mail car on the Pioneer Zephyr at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry,,, complete with donkey?


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## OlympianHiawatha

andersone said:


> complete with donkey?


That is _*Zephyrus*_ the Talking Mule. He tells visitors all about it.

*UPDATE* - It is a donkey and not a mule and it looks like since I was last there in 2000 his name has been shortened to _*Zeph*_, maybe because that is easier to say. He is an animatronic that "lives" in a crate in the Baggage area.


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## dlagrua

Fed X and UPS have taken full advantage of rail transportation of their tractor trailers by rail. It is mind boggling why the USPS has not followed suit. The USPS loses billions each year and they have no worries about cost savings????


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## Ispolkom

This site claims, "Although Amtrak stopped carrying mail in October 2004, the nation’s freight railroads continue to carry mail through their intermodal service."

I'm thinking some posters here are confusing railroads carrying mail with RPOs, which were an antiquated and expensive service when they were sensibly terminated in the 60s. It could well be that a New Jersey distribution center could benefit from using the Northeast Corridor, but the IG's report sounds a lot like any number of consultant reports I've read, written by highly paid outsiders who didn't know much about what they were writing about.


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## StriderGDM

I think we're past the point of being able to viably use passenger trains to handle 1st class mail any more.

In most cases the postal facilities are no longer near the train stations they'd need to be near.

If there's a market for it, NYC-WAS would be it, and I don't see it happening. (Though, honestly, mail pickup by 11:00, put on a Noon Acela, in DC by 4, delivered by 6... who knows... maybe..)


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## Bradenmeridian

I seem to recall that Amtrak did try a mail contract with USPS not that long ago but it hurt rail travel significantly because the way mail is handled now, separate container type cars full of already sorted mail needed to be added to the consist and trains were actually delayed waiting for these mail cars to be added and taken off.


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## StriderGDM

Bradenmeridian said:


> I seem to recall that Amtrak did try a mail contract with USPS not that long ago but it hurt rail travel significantly because the way mail is handled now, separate container type cars full of already sorted mail needed to be added to the consist and trains were actually delayed waiting for these mail cars to be added and taken off.


That wasn't mail specific, but basically fast package express and yes, it was a disaster. Albany was a point where they added such cars to the LSL.


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## VentureForth

Ispolkom said:


> I'm thinking some posters here are confusing railroads carrying mail with RPOs, which were an antiquated and expensive service when they were sensibly terminated in the 60s.


As for my previous post, it was a direct satirical hit on RPOs - and how the IG's report is just about as antiquated as the RPOs themselves.


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## RPC

Certainly not the point of this thread, but the reason USPS loses money is that it is the only organization in the US that is required by law to fully fund its pension plan. (If you look at the pension liabilities vs. assets for other businesses you can see why this is a big deal.)


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## jis

But there are certain other businesses, although not required by law, still manage to fund their pension fully, after of course having discontinued it for all new employees and substituting a defined contribution plan.  Of course, apparently USPS does not have that freedom to adjust retirement benefits either.


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## neroden

The USPS is supposed to fund its pension plan 50 years in advance for employees who haven't even been *hired* yet.

This is blatantly ridiculous and is not the way "fully funded" is interpreted in any other pension. This was just a Republican poison pill intended to kill off USPS.


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## jis

neroden said:


> The USPS is supposed to fund its pension plan 50 years in advance for employees who haven't even been *hired* yet.
> 
> This is blatantly ridiculous and is not the way "fully funded" is interpreted in any other pension. This was just a Republican poison pill intended to kill off USPS.


Yup. This part of the Republican plan to first undermine something legislatively, and then say see? It does not work. Sort of similar to the technique used by the freight railroads to get rid of passenger service. A confluence of that with the Democratic plan to save pensions of everyone at unsupportable levels in perpetuity, a well meaning but misguided plan, leads to this double whammy completely crippling the USPS


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## neroden

In fact, the USPS has simply been refusing to make the "pension" payments. Probably the only sane move.


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## CCC1007

With a new president coming to Amtrak, and with the USPS and Amtrak both being pushed to be more businesslike, would it be advantageous for mail and express cars to make a comeback?

If so, how many cars would be needed to cover the network? How many would need to be ordered? Would roadrailers make sense again to give non-rail service to more mail distribution centers? What about trailer on flatcar or container on flat car service on the tail end of passenger trains?

If not, why not? What would make it a better option for the USPS than trucks?


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## neroden

Mail's not operated the same way any more. It makes too much sense for the Postal Service to follow the lead of UPS and FedEx and put containers of mail on container trains run by freight railroads. This doesn't require Amtrak.


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## norfolkwesternhenry

would adding many mail cars to the back if heavy trains (esp Superliners) put a motive power strain on Amtrak? Also, would they need to worry about fitting into NYP/B&P tunnels?


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## CCC1007

norfolkwesternhenry said:


> would adding many mail cars to the back if heavy trains (esp Superliners) put a motive power strain on Amtrak? Also, would they need to worry about fitting into NYP/B&P tunnels?


Have you ever seen the videos of the southwest chief during the last five years of m&e? They ran with four locomotives. NYP wasn't a problem as the cars were built to Amtrak specifications and took the limited clearance into account.


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## jebr

With the way the USPS and shipping companies in general run these days, it simply doesn't make a lot of sense to go through Amtrak.

Most mail these days goes from local post office - regional sorting center - whatever intermediate sorting centers are required - regional sorting center - local post office. There wouldn't be enough volume to transfer over to Amtrak from local post offices to the regional sorting centers to make it worth the hassle (the trucks would likely have to run nearby anyways to pick up mail in cities that Amtrak doesn't serve, and now you have to find a way to get the mail from the post office to the Amtrak station and back on both ends.)

It's possible that a regional sorting center to regional sorting center shipment could work on Amtrak, but it'd have to be a market that doesn't have enough mail to justify a full truck. Anything that would be a full truck load couldn't be carried in the baggage cars, and why would any company want to deal with the additional hassle of hitching a car onto Amtrak when the stations aren't their origin or destination points? There's not many, if any, regional sorting centers within switching distance of an Amtrak station during a layover, which means that someone else would have to be involved for that last mile delivery. It makes far more sense (and would almost certainly cost less) to simply use existing intermodal facilities designed for shipping items instead of trying to hitch large shipments onto a carrier which is focused on transporting people. Even on those less than truck load shipments, there's still the last mile problem mixed with Amtrak not being a shipping company.

There's not many places that Amtrak could come in that wouldn't be better served by existing offerings, either by truck, plane, or freight railroad, and I doubt it'd be profitable enough to justify the dilution in focus. After all, Amtrak is focused on transporting people first, and cargo only incidentally (customer's luggage) or in a minor way (Amtrak Express shipments, which aren't terribly well advertised and only work for certain situations, so it's not popular enough to justify additional investment on its own.) Having Amtrak put a stronger focus on freight will almost certainly dilute the passenger experience, so unless there's enough profit to make it a large net win, the passenger experience would almost certainly suffer if Amtrak got into freight or mail service in any major way.


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## jphjaxfl

When the Private Railroads carried mail, most of the mail was carried on slower trains so that did not disrupt passengers as much. Trains like the Broadway Limited and 20th Century Limited did include Railway Post Office cars which carried overnight mail which Post Office charged a premium for much as FedEX or UPS does now. On Pennsylvannia Railroad's New York-Chicago Route in the early 1960s, the Broadway Limited and the General carried very little mail, however the Pennsylvania Limited, Manhattan Limited and Admiral carried mail and made more stops. The Ft. Pitt was a local Pittsburgh-Chicago train that carried more mail and made more stops. With Amtrak's usually having 1 train per route, that train would have to carry the mail which would make it much more inconvenient to the traveling public.


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## cirdan

Where I do see some synergy is in the effect this could have on railroad thinking.

As has alraedy been said, the likes of UPS and Fedex already send stuff by train (I'm not sure how much in terms of percentage of total volume, but guess there is still room to increase this if the railroads could offer attarctive deals and OTP and speed)

There are also other shippers who will pay extra for faster delivery.

We often hear that if Amtrak is not always loved by the freight railroads, one reason for this is the difference in speeds and the disruption this causes for freight trains.

Now if the railroads started making more money with faster freight trains and running more of them, maybe even going up to Amtrak-speed for selected premium quality trains using passener quality equipment, this would change the way railroad management and dispatchers think about fast trains and thus Amtrak would be less of an oddball.

Another component here is the shrinking of the coal business. With the slowest moving of all freights becoming rarer, this could well be an opportunity to see overall average speeds rise.


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## jis

UPS and Fedex use rail for their Ground service where speed is not of paramount importance. For speed they charge extra and send it by air. They own their own pretty large air fleet to do so.


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## Ryan

Agreed. Amazon is even getting into the act, building their own air fleet to move their goods around without having to go through the likes of UPS/FedEx.

The mail handling system has evolved past the use of trains, trying to Internet Engineer a way of shoehorning it back in is a waste of effort. It isn't going to happen, and Amtrak is better for it. Their focus should be on transporting passengers, not wasting time and money on ancillary stuff like hauling cargo.


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## Palmetto

neroden said:


> Mail's not operated the same way any more. It makes too much sense for the Postal Service to follow the lead of UPS and FedEx and put containers of mail on container trains run by freight railroads. This doesn't require Amtrak.


But the USPS did have a proposal floating around to again use Amtrak to move the mail, when it made sense to do so. I went looking for it online, but could not locate it.


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## Carolina Special

There was a report issued in 2012 by the USPS Inspector General that said that intermodal rail was a "sensible option" compared to trucks. But the intermodal is the freight lines, not Amtrak.


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## railiner

I think that Amtrak should not attempt a repeat of the "Roadrailer" program it tried a few years ago. I believe it had a negative impact in on-time performance, as well as annoy the freight railroads over whose tracks Amtrak operated...in a sense, supporting their own competition...


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## Anderson

If we still had multiple-delivery in places like New York and/or Washington there might be a case for running "hot-shot" same-day mail delivery on the NEC (using Regionals, not the Acelas, of course). We do not live in that world anymore. Likewise, there are a few one-off pairs where shipping via Amtrak makes sense (let's face it, if you have more than two checked bags on an airline and you can spare the time, shipping via Amtrak is cheaper than paying excess luggage fees, and Amtrak doesn't break guitars;-)).

Truth be told, I Amtrak Expressed my luggage home from Worldcon: I was stuck on a JetBlue flight and decided that I _really_ did not want to haul my bags from the Drake to O'Hare, and then from baggage at JFK to NYP. It was worth the extra cost not to have to futz with that, and I was truly glad to give the money to Amtrak instead of JetBlue. My bags and I got to RVR at the same time, too!

Edit: What _would_ make more sense is if Amtrak made a point of advertising next-day delivery of packages at a fixed cost. At least on the East Coast, FedEx Standard Overnight versus Amtrak? No question on cost there...Amtrak wins. I sincerely don't think a second baggage car on a train would be the end of the world, but this is also a _far_ cry from the Mail-and-Express business they once did (and low-level competition with UPS/FedEx is not the same as what was attempted back in the 90s).


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## neroden

Yeah, I don't know why Amtrak doesn't properly advertise Amtrak Express. For the city-pairs where it is already operating (and which pairs are those? And why isn't that advertised?) I think they could get a lot more business than they already do.


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## CCC1007

neroden said:


> Yeah, I don't know why Amtrak doesn't properly advertise Amtrak Express. For the city-pairs where it is already operating (and which pairs are those? And why isn't that advertised?) I think they could get a lot more business than they already do.


My understanding is that any station that handles checked baggage can originate and terminate express shipments up to the size that the onsite equipment can handle safely. The only exception I've ever heard of is NYP which is not allowed to be the origin point of a shipment.


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## Palmetto

Your stream is offline.


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## CCC1007

Palmetto said:


> Your stream is offline.


I wasn't streaming today, that was Friday


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## Anderson

CCC1007 said:


> neroden said:
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, I don't know why Amtrak doesn't properly advertise Amtrak Express. For the city-pairs where it is already operating (and which pairs are those? And why isn't that advertised?) I think they could get a lot more business than they already do.
> 
> 
> 
> My understanding is that any station that handles checked baggage can originate and terminate express shipments up to the size that the onsite equipment can handle safely. The only exception I've ever heard of is NYP which is not allowed to be the origin point of a shipment.
Click to expand...

And IIRC the rule there is "take it to Newark".


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## dlagrua

Back in the days of "Special Delivery" overnight mail it made sense to have railway post office cars to quicken the flow. It would be to the rail car post office, sort on the trip, and pick up at the station. Then the post office used special cars ( may have been station wagons) to deliver the "Special Delivery mail. . As airline delivery became popular that's where much of the express mail was diverted. Current express and much priority mail goes by air or by truck. Passenger trains don't serve the structure of the current USPS system .


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## jphjaxfl

dlagrua said:


> Back in the days of "Special Delivery" overnight mail it made sense to have railway post office cars to quicken the flow. It would be to the rail car post office, sort on the trip, and pick up at the station. Then the post office used special cars ( may have been station wagons) to deliver the "Special Delivery mail. . As airline delivery became popular that's where much of the express mail was diverted. Current express and much priority mail goes by air or by truck. Passenger trains don't serve the structure of the current USPS system .
> 
> The US Mail has changed dramatically since the late 1960s when the RPOS were discontinued. First class mail has mostly become electronic. E-mail has replaced personal letters. Most of my bills are sent electronically. There is no need for RPOS on passenger trains.


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## Palmetto

Well, at one time Amtrak worked some mail on the NEC. They even had a dedicated train originating in Springfield MA in the middle of the night. Anyone know why that dried up?


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## CCC1007

Palmetto said:


> Well, at one time Amtrak worked some mail on the NEC. They even had a dedicated train originating in Springfield MA in the middle of the night. Anyone know why that dried up?


It was killed in 2004 when gunn chose not to renew the contracts.


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## Thirdrail7

MikefromCrete said:


> any mail would be moved in high priority container freight trains, not on Amtrak LD trains.





Palmland said:


> You can be sure that if mail does return to the rails, you won't find them on the likes of the Southwest Chief.


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## Thirdrail7

Carolina Special said:


> There was a report issued in 2012 by the USPS Inspector General that said that intermodal rail was a "sensible option" compared to trucks. But the intermodal is the freight lines, not Amtrak.


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## pennyk

MODERATOR NOTE:  Two threads on the same topic have been merged.


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## cirdan

One of the main advantages of mail on trains is that you can save time by sorting mail while the train is moving.

You can't do that very well on a plane and you can't really do it at all in a truck or in a container.

But seeing that email has eaten into the express delivery mail market, whereas the mail service has expanded more and more into parcels and boxes, thanks to the likes of Amazon, the speed thing is no longer a major selling point.

UPS and other parcel services already send containers by rail, and this will doubtlessly continue if not expand further. This could even be an incentive for railroads to raise speeds,(assuming the likes of UPS and FedEx would be willing to pay the railroads a premium for faster delivery) which could indirectly also benefit Amtrak.

Of course the question is whether there is room in the market for an intermediate speed level between slow freight train and air freight. Right now probably not. One day, who knows?

But I don't think there will ever be a revival of traditional style combined passenger and mail trains, at least not in my lieftime.


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## jphjaxfl

Mail has changed dramatically since the last Railway Post Office cars and REA express cars disappeared in the late 1960s. I worked in the Jeffersonville, IN post office from 1966-68 during my first 2 years in college. When I first started, we dispatched and received mail from various RPOs the most prominent being the Chicago, Logansport and Louisville RPO on PRR later PC Train 94 and 95 which stopped in Jeffersonville at 6:55 AM and 11:05PM. By the time I left the job 2 years later, the RPOs were just about gone except for one of L&N trains 8 and 9 which lasted a little longer. Back then, all pension checks, social security checks, and bills including utility bills were sent via first class mail monthly. There were many personal letters and cards being sent via first class mail. There are also significant amounts of newspapers, magazines and third class (junk mail). Fast forward to the 21st century and most pension, social security checks and other payments are sent electronically to banks. Many utility, credit card and others bills are sent out electronically. There is still a lot of junk mail and as has been mentioned package delivery via USPS, FedEx and UPS. There is no need for the type of mail service the Railroads once provided. IF REA Express still existed, there would be a place for it shipping packages by passenger train and providing the great local service that it once did. The REA Express infrastructure is long gone and there is good delivery service via the modes I mentioned, so mail on passenger trains will likely never return.


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## neroden

I could see Amtrak moving packages along the NEC (Boston-Philly, NY-DC, etc) faster than any truck or airplane could. The packages business is booming. Unfortunately the postal service dismantled *all* their rail-connected infrastructure (dumb), and the Railway Express infrastructure is all gone too, which makes it harder.


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## jebr

How much long-haul package business does USPS do? I could see them slowly working back towards using rail as needed, but it seems like a lot of their package business is UPS/FedEx/DHL/Amazon/etc. using the USPS for last-mile residential delivery where it's cheaper to drop off the packages at the local post office and pay the couple bucks for the last mile delivery than it is for them to use their own vehicles to the end customer. Rail wouldn't help the USPS at all in that instance, and that seems to be a lot of their focus right now.


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## cirdan

neroden said:


> I could see Amtrak moving packages along the NEC (Boston-Philly, NY-DC, etc) faster than any truck or airplane could. The packages business is booming. Unfortunately the postal service dismantled *all* their rail-connected infrastructure (dumb), and the Railway Express infrastructure is all gone too, which makes it harder.


Maybe in a broader context there is also a potential market for express freight on the NEC. It' could probably be faster than airfreight between some of the city pairs. So maybe such a service could be embedded within a larger airfreight network and use the same airfreight containers and logistics base. One big obstacle is that very few major airports or airfreight hubs are actually served by rail lines that could meaningfully carry such trains. So the startup investment would simply be too large.

Simiarly for the costs of building distribution terminals along the NEC. In many cases there isn't the land available on railroad property as former freight yards and things in downtown locations have been sold off long ago. The remaining locations are for the most part not that ideal.

So we are talking about very high startup costs for a potentially low margin business. That's not going to excite many investors.

Maybe at some point in the future these paradigms will shift again and the question can be re-assessed. But I venture to say not in the next 20 to 30 years.


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## dlagrua

MikefromCrete said:


> any mail would be moved in high priority container freight trains, not on Amtrak LD trains.


Maybe, but intermodal trains require special unloading facilities so its a point to point service. This mode of transport could be used to transport mail to major distribution centers at the largest cities but the beauty of the mail car (and the purpose of it) was to serve all the little towns along the route. Freight container mail cannot do this. The postmaster would wait for the trains arrival at the station and then quickly place the outgoing mail in the railway post office car while retrieving the mail for the local office. It really makes sense to do this as many rural towns have poor road access. The passenger train stops at those towns and to just use what is energy efficient and already available seems logical.


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## railiner

dlagrua said:


> MikefromCrete said:
> 
> 
> 
> any mail would be moved in high priority container freight trains, not on Amtrak LD trains.
> 
> 
> 
> Maybe, but intermodal trains require special unloading facilities so its a point to point service. This mode of transport could be used to transport mail to major distribution centers at the largest cities but the beauty of the mail car (and the purpose of it) was to serve all the little towns along the route. Freight container mail cannot do this. The postmaster would wait for the trains arrival at the station and then quickly place the outgoing mail in the railway post office car while retrieving the mail for the local office. It really makes sense to do this as many rural towns have poor road access. The passenger train stops at those towns and to just use what is energy efficient and already available seems logical.
Click to expand...

The problem with a working RPO, is the cost of the clerks working it...I kind of doubt if it would be cost effective....


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## jis

Besides, soon it might become more cost effective to send out drones to less accessible places.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## railiner

Delivery drones, 3-D Printing, what's next in the future.....Star Trek Transporter's?


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## west point

Zip codes and optical sorting machines have almost reduced to zero the need for RPOs. Now a miniature optical scanner might work in a RPO ?


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## jebr

The post office already operates on a hub-and-spoke model for the most part; it's much more efficient and allows computerized sorting to be done reasonably and inexpensively. Any sort of RPO set-up with on-board sorting would be, in comparison, a huge cost sink. First class mail already has went down to a two day standard for local mail (instead of next-day) because the USPS wants to have all mail go to the large sorting centers to be processed instead of having smaller local processing centers. I don't see any reason why the USPS would reverse course on that and start having RPOs again. _Maybe_ the USPS would start contracting with Amtrak again to move some first class mail in a point-to-point fashion, but even then unless Amtrak starts carrying baggage cars full of mail I don't see it being efficient for the USPS to try and use Amtrak as a middle-mile solution for transporting mail.


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## west point

jebr is correct. Local POs would have to sort mail and bar code mail that could go onto trains. They don't do that anymore except mail handed to a clerk.. As well someone has to be on duty to meet midnight trains.


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## Green Maned Lion

I would think working on postal delivery is a dead end anyway. Im not advocating for it, but how much longer do you really think we will have letter delivery?


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## west point

Additional clerks at each PO would only make loses worse. Now if a postage reduction for bar coding zip codes could run through optical scanners then maybe ? That way only mail to a RPO would go. And with onle one train on most routes a day anything over 6 hours from RPO would go to regional sort center.


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## neroden

We'll have letter delivery forever.

But it's not going to be a high-volume business.

Railroads thrive on high-volume business, and do badly on low-volume businesses.


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