TRAVELLING  POST  OFFICE  COACHES

OPEN  TO  THE  PUBLIC  FOR  THE  FIRST TIME

Mail was first sorted during movement by rail in 1838 – and stopped in January 2004.  The Buckinghamshire Railway owns two Travelling Post Office Coaches  - and opened them to public visitors for the first time over the Bank Holiday Weekend.
Sited at their exclusive Platform 5, a volunteer group have set up displays showing how these vehicles operated. The Sorting Coach contains envelopes, packets and parcels, and visitors enjoyed “sorting” mail and hearing recorded stories from former postal sorters and live ones from Steward Ray James, who received mail off the “TPOs” at Leighton Buzzard Station.
The Post Office Tender Vehicle continuously shows short films on mail by rail, including the 1936 film “Night Mail”, commissioned by the Post Office with commentary on how these trains worked and some lines from the poem of that name written by WH Auden.  On their way through to the Sorting Coach, visitors follow photographic and poster information about moving mail, up to some photographs of the last Travelling Post Office Train, which passed through Reading Station in January 2004.
TPO Group Member Sheila Lobley has set up a display on the Great Train Robbery that took place in August 1963 near Aylesbury, showing a front page of the following day’s Bucks. Herald, many details of the robbery, robbers and the aftermath with photographs – many kindly reproduced from the Bucks Herald archives.
Sheila said” This is a very exciting occasion – Ray and I love to see the visitors coming in and being bowled over by seeing such a display of what used to go on in the Travelling Post Offices – most people have heard of them, and certainly seen the distinctive red coaches, but hardly anyone else has seen inside them.  We are very pleased with the public’s reaction today.”
The coaches will be open from 1.00 pm to 4.00 pm on the last Sundays of August, September and October and over the weekend of the Traction Engine Rally on 20th and 21st September.  For further details contact sheila@lobley.net.