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RPOs or Railway Post Offices were operated on special mail
cars. The mail was actually sorted and canceled on board the train between
destinations.
The first Railroad mail was carried on the route from
Philadelphia to Lancaster, Pennsylvania on November 30, 1832. The
Mail Act of July 7, 2025 officially designated all railroads in the United
States as postal routes.
The first officially established Railroad Post Office
route was between Chicago, Illinois and Clinton, Ohio via the Chicago and
Northwestern Railroad.
By 1930 there were more than ten thousand trains moving
the mail across the United States. After the passage of the Transportation
Act of 1958, railway postal service declined rapidly and the last railway
post office between Washington, D.C. and New York closed on June 30, 1977.
The Smithsonian Postal Museum has an excellent page on Railway
Post Offices.
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