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The Travelling Post Office

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TheTravelling Post Office (TPO) was a railway carriage specially adapted for Post Office workers to sort mail on the move.  This exhibition charts the life of these postal sorting carriages, and the camaraderie of the staff that worked on them. The TPO takes us on a journey from their introduction in 1838 to their final run in 2004.

Travelling Post Office in red Royal Mail livery

We developed this exhibition using material from The Royal Mail Archive and the BPMA museum collection. You can now see a bigger version alongside the BPMA's restored 1908 TPO carriage at The Railway Age in Crewe. The exhibition also tells the story of its painstaking restoration. 

2004 photograph looking into a TPO where a worker is sorting mail surrounded by mail bags