Prototypical orientation of RPO car?

Keith Levine posted:

I have a heavyweight B&O RPO car with a large door for mailbags and a small door for the crew.  (Perhaps I'm wrong about the uses of the doors?)

The "small door" is where the mail bag hook was located, which was used for "hooking" a bag of mail mounted on a "mail crane" located very close to the track side.

Is there a prototypical orientation of the car (large door to the front or large door to the rear) or was the car oriented in either way?

I'm not aware that RPO cars were ever turned so as to orient them in a paticula direction, since the big hook used to "catch" the mail bags was removable & reversible. 

Also, would the RPO car be placed between the tender and the baggage car or somewhere else?

Yes, generally the RPO was directly behind the tender since the RPO cars were locked and the US Postal Clerks were                                                                   armed. Thus there would not have access by the public to or through the RPO.                                                                

Cheers

Keith

Is this a full RPO or combine baggage/RPO.    I am going to guess on full RPO, orientation would not matter.   Usually full RPOs have 6 windows on the sides and 2 small doors.     Combines usually have 3 windows in the RPO section with small doors and a large door on the baggage end.   

If it is combine and the baggage section is being used for baggage it would make sense to put the RPO toward the front and the baggage section toward the rest of the train.   That way, if needed, the conductor or someone else could access the baggage section.    I believe, that no one other than US Postal Service employees were allowed to enter the RPO when it was in service.

Another alternative is that the baggage section is being used for mail storage or transit of closed bags.    In that case orientation would not matter because that section would also be closed off.

I read an article in the Prrt&HS bulletin some years ago about RPOS.    It said that the PO leased RPO sections in 15, 30, and 60 ft sections.    A full RPO car would have a 60 ft RPO section.   If the car is longer, it might have a mail storage area too.    A typical RPO/Baggage combine had a 30 ft RPO section.    15 ft RPOs were on some gas-electrics and I think on some special built cars for branchlines that included coach and sometimes baggage sections.

The only thing I've ever seen about orientation was about the Seaboard Air Line.  I read they preferred to have their passenger cars with the vestibules facing toward the rear in case of an accident (hitting an oncoming train) the damage would most likely be at the front of the car, thereby enabling the passengers to get out at the rear.  I doubt they adhered to this 100% of the time, or maybe not at all   I'll have to check my books and see what the average orientation is.  Never read anything about the RPOs.

Several other issues would affect placement.  Sometimes if the RPO was sorting a lot of mail, there might be baggage car(s) next to it.  The baggage car(s) would hold mailbags  to be, or was sorted.

Or you might have baggage cars with sealed mail, which went from one city to the next without being sorted at all en route.  Express boxcars also were used in this roll.  Railway Mail was more than RPO's.

If the train was a mail and express train, the RPO could be in the MIDDLE of the train.

If one wants to model this kind of railroading, one needs to model the time, place, train, and railroad the RPO would run on.  Not all passenger trains had RPO's, and some had RPO's depending on the day of the week.  Or the RPO would be added or dropped enroute.

Interesting modeling.  Interesting study.  Interesting operations.

Very interesting. Just learned a little more today!!

U.S. Postal regulations required that there be no occupied cars between the locomotive and the RPO.  Express boxcars and reefers, mail storage cars and unoccupied baggage cars could be ahead of the RPO.  Any baggage cars with a Railway Express guard or clerk needed to be behind the RPO.

There's multiple angles on mailbag pickups beginning about a minute: 20 sec. into this video:(The Ill.Railway Museum runs an RPO on a certain weekend each year.)

My B&O RPO car is like the one in the Illinois Railway Museum video that Doug posted: it has a small door with 3 windows to its side and a large door at the other end.

I didn't know there was a car that was RPO and baggage and that such a car was called a "combine."  I thought that "combine" referred to a coach-baggage (most commonly), a coach-RPO, or a baggage-dorm car.

In any case, I'm thinking that a flagship passenger train like the B&O Capitol Limited (the train my RPO is part of) would have a dedicated RPO car.  Is that right?  If so, the end with the large door would be for mail storage.  Then, it would seem to make sense to orient the RPO with the end with the small door and windows, where the postal clerks sorted the mail, to the rear, with the baggage car behind it.  In this way, the postal clerks would serve as a buffer between the baggage car and the mail.  What do you think?

Keith