Page 68 - Demo

In 1869, the Railway Mail Service was created to transport and sort mail aboard trains. By sorting en route, speedier delivery could be insured at the mail%u2019s destination. At one time, there were over 9,000 train routes, but in the 1940s, the network began to decline. By 1962, there were only 262 routes in the United States.Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the Post Office Department started a new program to replace the Railway Post Offices. It consisted of postal busses traveling on the country%u2019s highways, which were known as Highway Post Offices. The first such route was on February 10, 1941, between Washington, D.C., and Harrisonburg, Virginia%u2014a distance of 149 miles.That very first brightly colored red-white-and-blue Highway Post Office bus was built by the White Motor Company of Cleveland, OH. When it was retired in the 1960s, a postal worker hid it in a series of Post Office Department garages to keep it from being sold for scrap. Today, it sits, fully restored, in the Crawford Museum of Transportation and Industry, Western Reserve Historical Society, in Cleveland, OH.Highway Post Offices were a relatively common sight on American highways in the 1950s and 1960s, but I never saw one. Clerks worked tirelessly inside the buses which had layouts similar to their railroad predecessors. On June 30, 1974, the last Highway Post Office made its final run between Cincinnati and Cleveland. While the Highway Post Offices were created to replace the mail trains, the Railway Mail Service actually lasted longer%u2014until 1977. My two Highway Post Office First Trip Covers were from routes in the South. Both were given me by Grandma Mendy, and are cancelled in 1949, the year I was born.