kasvik
Member 
Posts: 549
What I collect: Cancels mostly, especially Sweden Gävle and Lidingö, Switzerland Geneva, Germany Pforzheim
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Post by kasvik on Aug 22, 2020 12:47:21 GMT
Do other countries do this, with special cancelations for train mail? These are ordinary stamps--not railroad stamps--canceled in the post office mail car. It must be much more common than I know.
Here is a nice one. According to Facet Postal, the PKP 253 A cancel was used on mail from Gävle to Stockholm, with interruptions, 1899-1968.
Railroad cancels are an another way to collect Sweden, with hundreds of varieties. The early ones used abbreviations of the route or showed the cities. In the 1880s they switched most to numerical codes, like this one. They remind me of early German and Danish cancels that substituted numbers for city names. It’s a parallel cancelation universe, not as popular as city cancels, probably because of the effort to decode the things. 
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vikingeck
Member
Posts: 3,295
What I collect: Samoa, Tobacco theme, Mail in Wartime, anything odd and unusual!
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Post by vikingeck on Aug 22, 2020 16:57:30 GMT
Many countries had "TRAVELING POST OFFICES" TPO for short ie sorting carriages on trains to ensure faster delivery service. (Largely superseded in the 1970s by mail carried by air ) Here is a typical German Bahnpost by Train 7 (ZUG 7) between the two towns named on the cancel  |
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vikingeck
Member
Posts: 3,295
What I collect: Samoa, Tobacco theme, Mail in Wartime, anything odd and unusual!
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Post by vikingeck on Aug 22, 2020 17:02:47 GMT
Here is an early British one from the 19th century which my club used as a postcard for our Centenary The "PERTH & ABERDEEN SORTING CARRIAGE" 1871  |
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vikingeck
Member
Posts: 3,295
What I collect: Samoa, Tobacco theme, Mail in Wartime, anything odd and unusual!
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Post by vikingeck on Aug 22, 2020 17:13:20 GMT
France had an extensive network of Bureaux Ambulants (TPO) and Courriers Convoyeurs (Mail guards) until the 1990s Cancels with scalloped edges and two town names will have been sorted on a train  |
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tomiseksj
Moderator 
Woodbridge, Virginia, USA
Posts: 6,276 
What I collect: Worldwide stamps/covers, Cinderellas, Ohio Prepaid Sales Tax Receipts, U.S. WWII Ration ephemera
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Post by tomiseksj on Aug 22, 2020 18:31:59 GMT
This cover traveled southbound aboard Train 13 of the Albuquerque & El Paso local on July 14, 1958 and received a Railway Post Office (RPO) postmark during the almost 300 mile trip. Also shown is an excerpt from Charles L. Towle's " The Catalog of New Mexico Railway Postal Markings" (the site's security certificate is not current so you will likely get a security warning). |
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Post by stamphinger on Aug 23, 2020 15:20:40 GMT
Hi Kasvik
I have a small, but growing collection of covers canceled on Railway Post Offices that ran to or through my home state of Iowa. I also collect these because I was a substitute railway mail clerk back in 1959 and 1960 before I transferred into the Omaha, NE, post office. I worked on Chicago & Omaha, Chicago, West Liberty, & Council Bluffs, Omaha & Ogden Eastern Division, and the Omaha and Denver RPOs.
Below is a cover with a nice clear RPO cancel from the Carroll & Sioux City RPO. It ran on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. The sender lived in Somers, Iowa, a small town northeast of Carroll. The cover is addressed to the Secretary-Treasurer of the Railway Mail Service Credit Union in Chicago, so I speculate that the sender was a RPO clerk who worked on the Carroll & Sioux City RPO and, perhaps, mailed a deposit or loan payment to the credit union. It's my recollection that the mail canceled on RPOs came from drop boxes at railroad depots where the trains stopped. As a non-regular clerk on an RPO run, one of my duties was to "rob the box," that is to grab a mail pouch, jump down from the car, unlock the drop box and empty the contents into the pouch, get back on the car and cancel the mail. One of the regular clerks would then distribute it.
The Railway Mail Service also had "terminals" at major railroad depots and junction points. There was a terminal at Council Bluff, Iowa, and Omaha, Nebraska, and I worked in both of those when I wasn't on the road. While some first-class mail went into and out of terminals, the terminals sorted mostly third-class mail and parcel post. Terminals had their own post marks and one from the Omaha terminal is also posted below.
Collecting RPO post marks is an interesting sideline for me. I have only recently started this collection and I have a long way to go. I estimate there were more than 250 different RPOs that ran in Iowa alone.
Don StampHinger The terminal post mark includes the tour number just above the date. Terminals I worked in ran three tours, Tour 1 was approximately 11 pm to 7 am, Tour 2 7 am to 3 pm, Tour 3 3 pm to 11 pm.
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kasvik
Member
Posts: 549
What I collect: Cancels mostly, especially Sweden Gävle and Lidingö, Switzerland Geneva, Germany Pforzheim
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Post by kasvik on Sept 29, 2020 0:13:06 GMT
A couple newly acquired French scalloped railroad cancels, courtesy of Delcampe. It's the trans-national cancels that got my attention; 1901 Gex-Geneva (right across the border) and 1924 Geneva-Lyon (a respectable distance). The cross-border aspect is especially interesting; the UPU-bred confidence that staff on the other side will fetch, sort and deliver it, no questions asked, no fee. Who needs the EU? 
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kasvik
Member
Posts: 549
What I collect: Cancels mostly, especially Sweden Gävle and Lidingö, Switzerland Geneva, Germany Pforzheim
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Post by kasvik on Feb 29, 2024 19:44:44 GMT
This one got my notice, connecting my two favorite towns. I'm impatient, so here's the seller's slap-dash scan. It started on the Sala-Gävle train (PLK 283A), must have been transferred to a Gävle-Stockholm train, then by truck to Lidingö. Cancelled on the back Lidingö Villastad, back when even the local post office was conquered by the development company that took over the place for about twenty years.
The sender decorated it for 10 öre with a combination of two-colors and a 2 öre regular. One sees that sort of thing fairly often.
The recipient looks to have preferred her own Christian name. A single lady, or just very modern. The equivalent of showing a bit of ankle.
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rod222
Member
Posts: 10,020
What I collect: Worldwide Stamps, Ephemera and Catalogues
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Post by rod222 on Feb 29, 2024 21:07:32 GMT
@kasvik "The equivalent of showing a bit of ankle." I just love your turn of phrase !  always bring a smile If you wrote a book, I'd be reading it. |
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kasvik
Member
Posts: 549
What I collect: Cancels mostly, especially Sweden Gävle and Lidingö, Switzerland Geneva, Germany Pforzheim
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Post by kasvik on Mar 1, 2024 19:19:10 GMT
@kasvik "The equivalent of showing a bit of ankle." I just love your turn of phrase ! always bring a smile If you wrote a book, I'd be reading it.
You're too kind. For me it's the most frustrating part of the whole philatelic history business. Sometimes you get lucky, but more often we know nothing about these people. So I take the crumbs and make up what I can. Keeps me from wandering the streets, irritating the dog walkers. |
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always bring a smile