Last post: no fanfare for Great Britain’s final mail train

Bringing an era to an end. Great Britain’s last train serving the Royal Mail is scheduled for today, Friday, 20 September. The National Postal Service is divesting itself of its dedicated fleet of bright red trains. The sidelining of in-house rail operations (in favour of a network of road and air transport) brings to an end a service that has endured for almost two centuries.

The purpose-built electric multiple units, which have been carrying letters and parcels for the Royal Mail since 1995, reach the end of the line today. The UK portal service is running its rail service into the buffers. The Royal Mail has put up for sale the fleet of fifteen four-car class 325 EMUs. The organisation is pulling out of its railway operations just as the private sector is gearing up for rail-delivered express logistics.

Two centuries of mail on rail

Earlier this year, Royal Mail announced that it would cease its rail operations by October. That time has come. The single route left running – Daventry in the West Midlands to Glasgow – is a withered arm of a service that is almost as old as the railways themselves. The ubiquitous mail train was once a familiar sight in every corner of the national network.

Postal traffic was among the first cargo loads carried by the railways in Britain. Research from Network Rail revealed that the mail was first conveyed on the tracks in 1830. That is less than four years after the historic Stockton and Darlington Railway carried its first passengers and seven years before Queen Victoria ascended to the UK throne. Since then, the mail train has seen many iterations and innovations, including the travelling post office, which sorted mail on the move and dropped mail bags for delivery from moving trains.

Other commercial interest

Despite the many changes in structure and ownership, including the splitting of the Royal Mail from the high street Post Office operation, the mail train has endured. In living memory, almost every passenger express conveyed a mail or parcels car, and many dedicated overnight mail trains ensured the UK postal service was able to maintain a ‘next day’ delivery service for virtually every address in the British Isles.

Modern independent operations – like the fast-growing Varamis Rail and the innovative Intercity RailFreight – are already making daily deliveries and building up from the margins of the market. Varamis has already expressed interest in the soon-to-be redundant Royal Mail train sets. The potential exists for other operators to enter the market. Royal Mail’s move does seem to be against the flow, but there is a precedent elsewhere.

Britain is one of many places in Europe with a dedicated mail train in the modern era. France had a similar service, operated by the state-run SNCF, running dedicated lookalike TGV trains, commonly known as “La Poste”. The trains ran on the French high-speed network, ostensibly making them by far the fastest freight trains in the world. In Italy, for a period of about five years, the freight operator Mercitalia ran some converted high-speed train sets for express logistics services.

It’s understood by RailFreight.com that the last service departs tonight just before 9pm thsi evening, on the run to Glasgow, with a return overnight. It will be the last Night Mail, crossing the border.