SORTING CARRIAGE

Grey River Argus, 13 May 1938, Page 12

SORTING CARRIAGE

FIRST TRAVELLING POST.

i A hundred years ago a horse-box temporarily fitted as a sorting carriage, was tried on the Grand Junction Railway between Birmingham and Liverpool six months after that railway had been opened. That was the first travelling Post Office. In the same year a sorting carriage was constructed, a small vehicle 16ft in length, and this carriage was fitted with apparatus for receiving and dispatching mails while travelling at speed. On September 17, 1838, the London and Birmingham Railway was opened in its entire length, thereby joining the Grand Junction and North Union lines and giving a direct route to the North. The first travelling Post Office from London ran from Euston to somewhere north of Bletchle, Where the coach road—-Watling Street—crosses the railway. This service was extended to Preston on October 1, other extensions were made, and on April 25, 1860, the South showed sufficent enterprise to start a sorting carriage between London and Dover. I