How Did Trains Grab Mail Without Stopping?

For about a hundred years, American trains picked up the mail without stopping. A steel arm grabbed the bag off a crane beside the tracks, at full speed. Then, in 1967, the mail left the trains — and it nearly took the passenger train down with it. This is the story of the Railway Mail Service: the first sorting car in 1864, the Fast Mail, the catcher arm and the mail crane, the "snowstorm" clerks feared, the exams, Owney the postal dog, and how losing the mail helped lead to Amtrak in 1971. Chapters 0:00 It didn't stop 0:22 The slow way 0:44 A post office on wheels 1:07 The catch 1:27 Snowstorm 1:51 The test 2:14 Owney 2:39 The peak 2:50 Trucks and planes 3:16 1967 3:45 The last run Sources Smithsonian National Postal Museum, "Railway Mail Crane and Catcher Arm": https://postalmuseum.si.edu/railway-m... Smithsonian National Postal Museum, "Mail on the Fly": https://postalmuseum.si.edu/research-... Smithsonian National Postal Museum, "Time-Off, Schemes, and Exams": https://postalmuseum.si.edu/research-... Smithsonian National Postal Museum, "A Fast Start, 1864–1875": https://postalmuseum.si.edu/research-... Smithsonian National Postal Museum, "150th Anniversary of Railway Mail Service": https://postalmuseum.si.edu/150th-ann... National Archives, Prologue, "The Fast Mail" (Fall 2005): https://www.archives.gov/publications... USPS Historian, "Mail by Rail": https://about.usps.com/who/profile/hi... USPS Postal Facts, "Owney, the postal dog": https://facts.usps.com/owney-the-post... Wikipedia: "Railway post office", "Railway Mail Service", "Catcher pouch", "Owney (dog)", "Amtrak" Footage & photos (public domain unless marked CC0 / CC BY) Films: "Train Picks Up Mail Bag" (American Mutoscope & Biograph, 1903), Library of Congress paper print, via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/CEP00089 "Mail Transportation" (U.S. Post Office Department, 1923), U.S. National Archives, via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/28-19 "Some of Uncle Sam's Workshops [Post Office]" (Ford Educational Library, 1922), U.S. National Archives, Ford Motor Company Collection, via Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/fc-fc-3146 Photos and drawings (via Wikimedia Commons): Smithsonian National Postal Museum (Flickr Commons, no known restrictions): railway post office clerks, cars and loading areas; Highway Post Office bus (1941) and clerks; Owney the dog and his tags (1888–1897) Library of Congress: "Men working in a railway mail train" (1909); "The Fast Mail" print (1875); railway postal diagram of Wisconsin (1882); railway mail map of Virginia (1910); fast mail train at Horseshoe Curve (1903) "The American Railway" (1889), book illustrations; "Interior of a Postal-Car" by A. C. Warren (1873); "Fast-mail train" (1876) DPLA / Minnesota and U.S. collections: C&NW Railway Post Office and Fast Mail train, Blue Earth County, Minnesota (c.1868); Lake Crystal, Minnesota (c.1900); CB&Q fast mail interior; U.S. patent drawings "Mail-Bag Catcher" (1916, 1918) George B. Armstrong portrait (1909) Roger Puta collection (public domain): Railway Post Office cars 1961–1967 (Chicago Great Western; Texas & Pacific; Southern Pacific "The Lark", San Francisco, 1967); Santa Fe trains (1964) Union Pacific Fast Mail (1954); Burlington mail car "Silver Post" (1949); Railway Post Office at work (1965); Santa Fe El Capitan dining car (c.1940); Amtrak Turbotrain (1971) CC0: Owney at the National Postal Museum (2011); Burlington Zephyr mail hook (2012); Colorado & Southern Railway Post Office car CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... "Northbound Coast Daylight at San Jose, May 1, 1971" and "Amtrak train 5 at Eckley, July 1971" by Drew Jacksich; "Illinois Railway Museum, 20 September 2017 Post Office Car" by Mike Steele Music: "Limit 70" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License — http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... Narration: AI voice.