Christmas Eve at the London Post Office.

Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2046, 23 March 1887, Page 3

Christmas Eve at the London Post Office.

Christmas Ere was characterised at the General Post Office bj the heaviest amount of letters, newspapers, and parcels which has ever passed through the chief office in one day. The pressure during Christmas week is always exceedingly great, but it has been last year so exceptional as to be greater than could be dealt with in the building. The various chiefs of departments were continuously working from December 23 until ten o’clock on Christmas Day, and the ordinary staff of the department was nearly doubled by relays of extra bands taken on fur the occasion. No fewer than SOU of these were in attendance on the mght preceding Christmas Day, and there was at one time the vast number of 4,000 sorters and porters working simultaneously in St Martin's-le Grand. The duty in the Parcels Post Department was proportionately heavy, and the block of packages was such as to render it exceedingly difficult to move at all. During the day and night no fewer than the startling total of 10,000,000 letters, newspapers, and postcards were dealt with, a great proportion of thia enormous total being made up of Christmas cards, which lay in stacks many feet high in all directions. In order to cope with so enormous a bulk of matter, the usual mail trains were doubled, and in some instances trebled. The pressure at the various railway stations was practically as great as at the bead office itself, and many hundreds of bags and baskets filled with letters lay for several hours on the various platforms before hands could be found to deal with them. At Waterloo, over 300 large baskets of parcels were iu evidence throughout the afternoon, and at Euston the three arrival platforms were blocked for over an hour with packages of mails to such an extent as to render moving about impossible. A very curious spectacle was the now wellknown “ T.P.0.,” or Travelling Post Office train, which moved away from Easton Station at eight o’clock. Although nearly doable the usual length, this train, which runs as far as Aberdeen, had to leave behind almost as much matter as it carried. The sorting carriages were so packed with mails and parcels as to render it a positive problem how the sorters could manage to do their work.