TPO operation.

[Danensian]

Sily question, perhaps;

Did the night mails work back during the following day as conventional mail trains to be in time for their next duty?

I assume that they did because the 'apparatus' would be on the wrong side; west for down services, east for up.

[hq1hitchin]

Sily question, perhaps;

Did the night mails work back during the following day as conventional mail trains to be in time for their next duty?

I assume that they did because the 'apparatus' would be on the wrong side; west for down services, east for up.

No not a silly question at all, but they only generally made one trip in each direction and were turned after that so as to have the 'ratcatchers' on the correct side for the return journey. At the southern end, for instance, the TPOs left Hornsey CS around 10:00 M- S and went to Stratford to be turned on the triangle there. I believe at Newcastle it was from Heaton CS and turned via the King Edward and High Level bridges. No doubt the Geordie boys will put us right on this one. Another point to be born in mind is that the 'wrong' side of a TPO van only had one pair of doors as opposed to the two sliding doors on the other side so that the transfer of mails would be very much slowed if the train was even put into a platform where both doors were not available.

As an aside, nobody's ever been able to tell me how the exchange of mails was carried out, at speed, during fog or falling snow. The best reply I ever got was from a former Grantham fireman (the late Alan Richardson RIP) who told me that when working 'the first mail' aka 87 Up, if it was very foggy the postal staff would come up at Peterborough and ask them to 'pop' the whistle as they got near the exchange points.

[52A]

Yes you are right with that one, it was a regular Heaton job to "turn the posties" round the bridges.

[Danensian]

Thank you for that;

It's the one detail I've never managed to find out until now.

[Dave Cockle]

Prior to 1966 the East Coast Mail Vans used to get turned on the Dalston Triangle.