Terminal Railway Post Office

Terminal railway post offices were sorting facilities which were established by the Railway Mail Service to speed the distribution of parcel post. These offices were usually located in or near railroad stations in major cities or junction points. Terminal railway post offices operated generally from 1913-1914 into the mid-1960s, before their function was absorbed by post office sectional centers.

On January 1, 1913, the United States Post Office began handling parcel post, in addition to letters and more conventional mail. This service, which was in direct competition with the privately owned express companies, was quickly embraced by the general public, and over two million packages were mailed in the first week after parcel post service began.

Terminal Railway Post Offices (Term RPO) were started in nearly 100 cities in late 1913 and 1914, primarily to help handle the increase in volume of parcel post which was overwhelming the main transportation system. These terminals also came to distribute transit parcel post, circulars, magazines, and papers - mail that was generally considered less urgent than first class letters. Letter cases were used at many terminals to take care of advance work or unworked letters from Railway Post Office (RPO) routes, while a few terminals handled parcel post almost exclusively. The largest terminal railway post office was the Penn Terminal in the G.P.O. Building in New York City, New York—in 1951, it had over 1,100 clerks. Penn Terminal handled advance work for many of the railway post office routes leaving New York City. By comparison, the West Side Terminal, located along the New York Central line near the Hudson River piers, handled parcel post almost exclusively. Because parcel post transportation was generally by rail, most terminal RPOs were housed in or adjacent to the railroad station.

Where mails for more than one state were distributed, the "state rights" of the assignments were prorated. If one-fourth of the mail distributed at the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Terminal was Ohio mail, clerks with "Ohio rights" were entitled to one-fourth of the assignments.

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