RPO cars on Bristol line

[NW Mailing List]

Andre Jackson stated: "I unearthed today some photos in my stash of Nos. 9 and 10 and there was indeed an RPO tucked in among the sundry head-end equipment in all the shots.

Paul Mandelkern asked: "Please explain what was the 15 foot apartment RPO that ran on the Abingdon to West Jefferson branch." Jim Nichols answered: "The car used on the Abingdon branch was a class BMg, which had a 15' RPO apartment and the rest of the car was baggage. Four wheel trucks, built by Bethlehem in January 1927."

Andre Jackson added: "my modeling focus is 1957, summer or early fall."

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I have attached schedules for the ABINGDON & WEST JEFFERSON RPO, BRISTOL & CHATTANOOGA RPO, and WASHINGTON & BRISTOL RPO, circa 1954-1955 that were still in effect during 1956.  The 1955-1956 years are challenging for Railway Post Office research because the Post Office Department transitioned from bound to loose-leaf schedules.  The loose-leaf pages were updated weekly with new pages replacing out-dated ones and so attempts to review information for a specific month and year after 1956 is hit-or-miss --mostly miss.

The compilation shows that for some trains, the space assignment between routes changed at Bristol.  This suggests that RPO cars of appropriate size were added or removed during the station dwell time and those cars laid over at Bristol.  I do not have positive identification whether trains 17-18 and 45-46 had cars that operated through Bristol.  That would have been a good question for clerks at a reunion about 30 years ago if I had thought to ask.  I can only infer that they cars on those trains continued through between the routes since the space assignments are identical.

Trains 9 and 10 between Roanoke and Bristol as well as between Bristol and West Jefferson were N&W 15-feet apartment RPO cars.  All other trains utilized SOU RPO cars.

Best wishes,

Frank Scheer
f_scheer at yahoo.com

P.S. Andre: Please send a note to me off-list with your uncle's name and which route(s) he worked on.  I might have more information relevant to his career.
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