Mail and rail belong together
Almost from the very beginning of Britain’s railway, Royal Mail has used trains to transport post across the country. The first recorded ‘postal movement by rail’ was on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830. But now, after nearly 200 years of ‘mail rail’, Royal Mail announced that it is scrapping the last of its fleet of mail trains.
The history of mail on rail is a long one. By 1838 ‘Travelling Post Offices’ (TPO) were in operation across the British rail network, with postal workers sorting mail in train carriages while travelling up to 70mph. This led to my favourite Victorian invention: the Mail Bag Exchange Apparatus. While most of the sorted mail was transferred at station platforms, some was exchanged en route without the train stopping. To achieve this, a giant net hung from the side of the TPO and would snatch bags of mail that had been hoisted up a trackside pole; at the same time the mail was snatched, a bag of sorted mail would be deposited. Genius!
In 1936, the General Post Office Film Unit produced a documentary film called Night Mail which has become a cult classic. The film follows the nightly mail train as it travels from Euston to Aberdeen. A poem by W. H. Auden narrates the journey, with a rhythm that imitates the sound of a steam train:
This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time…
The final TPO ran on 9 January 2004, and whilst Royal Mail has continued to use the railways to transport mail just as it had in the 1830s, could this latest decision be the start of the end of this long partnership between the mail and rail?
Earlier this month, Royal Mail announced it will decommission its remaining freight trains by 10 October 2024, with a plan to increase the amount of post it moves by road. This deeply concerning decision undermines the huge economic and environmental benefits of rail freight and could result in many more lorries congesting our roads and polluting our air.
A recent progress report by the Climate Change Committee showed that the UK is not on course to meet its interim 2030 net-zero targets. With transport still being the UK’s largest emitting sector, it’s clear where emissions need to be cut from and shifting freight from road to rail will be key. Rail produces 76 per cent less carbon per tonne of freight carried than the equivalent road transport, while a single freight journey can replace up to 129 HGV journeys. Royal Mail’s decision to sell off its freight trains will almost certainly result in more lorries on our roads, especially as it also plans to switch away from using domestic flights in favour of road transport instead.
It’s worth noting that the Chair of Royal Mail is Keith Williams, of The Williams Rail Review fame. Along with Grant Shapps, he authored the 2021 Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail which committed to setting the rail freight growth target we have now: 75 per cent growth in net freight tonne kilometres by 2050. He has written at length about the need to grow rail freight, but this decision risks shrinking it.
According to DB Cargo who operate Royal Mail’s train, the decision has been made based on rising costs of electric traction. So, what can be done?
Well, there’s plenty of ways the Government can level the playing field between road haulage and rail freight. It could:
- Unfreeze fuel duty, which has been frozen for more than a decade
- Reduce track access charges for freight trains
- Reduce the cost of electricity for rail freight operators who have switched to electric traction.
And there’s something you can do too. We’re sending Keith Williams a giant postcard asking him to reach out to the Government and find a solution that increases the amount of freight moved by rail. As Chair of both Royal Mail and the Great British Railways Transition Team, he is in a good position to do this.
We’d love it if you could sign your name on our postcard and show Royal Mail and the Government that mail and rail belong together.
Sign our postcard here.
Header image: Ross Holdway, via Wikimedia Commons.
