Royal Mail on Trains in Canada

This is long overdue.  During the steam era the name of the Canadian post office was Royal Mail Canada. There is an overview of the Canadian RPO history on Old Time Trains. This article dates the last RPO as 1971 and final mail by rail as 1987. Via Rail trains today with baggage cars are the exception not the rule.

VERY interesting, and answers many questions I have had, except for why I have not
seen any CP, CN, or other Canadian RPO cars offered, even in old Walthers kits, much

less in three rail.  A friend and I both collect RPO cars, love passenger set breakups,

and often find one the only thing in a catalog that is interesting enough to preorder.

It sounds like Canadian railway postal service is a mirror image of  the U.S. one,

including, I am guessing, very similar RPO cars.  They certainly look similar in the

article.  Makes one wonder if there was an international agreement of standarization,

anf if Canadian RPO cars made it across the border to be switched unto U.S. roads

for delivery to a U.S. main sorting office, and the reverse?  Such a sorting office,

with a switcher moving RPO cars in and out, has been one of my goals.  There have

been postings of such offices, with fleets of trucks, on the forum.

Sure, As a kid I can remember  people  mailing  letters right at  the mail car  when the train arrived in our town.  When I started as a brake man in 1965 and working  as a baggage man it was not uncommon to have  half of the baggage car loaded with  mail bags to be  unloaded at certain stops.... If really busy and short for  time  the fireman would comeback and give a hand unloading bags

 Short story...One of my first trips as a baggage man.... To start off I get a short call and have to be  at Toronto union station  around 7PM It's at least an hour and and half drive and it already 5:30.  Well I make it on time and finally find the train on whatever track. ( i did get turned around in the lower level of the station and wasn't sure of the direction the train was departing , however I did find the  baggage car . Not only one baggage car but another and they're pack solid, canoes. mail, baggage, valuables  medicine, plus all the OCS mail (on company service)

The Conductor  arrives and asks for my stamp (pay role number and name) He's kind of unfriendly and asks if I had worked this job before. No I haven't.... Well you shouldn't be here then and he walks away back to the coach,

 An hour or  two  later the conductor IS  back and this time he's very friendly  and starts asking a few question about my dad..... turns out he's my dad's cousin and when stamping the time return noticed I had the same last name as him....  

Weaver did offer CP and CNR RPO cars in 2008.

The West Coast Railway Heritage Park in Squamish, British Columbia, has a restored RPO that delivered mail in the western provinces.  The interior is very nicely restored and the drop boxes demonstrate the various towns served.

Canada looks like it did use the USPS rail mail playbook almost to the letter!