India Envelope Railroad Postmark?

I don't think the stamp is anything special, but I would like to get a catalog number on it, but the postmark partially read Calcutt R, and I wonder if that is a railroad postmark. Would anyone know or want to put their two cents worth in? I would like very much to put this poor stamp in its' proper place. (who said "waste basket?"). Thanks - Jeff

Actually it is Calicut, a city in the state of Kerala, south-west India. It is now called Kozhikode.

And this is a cut square from an Indian ½ Anna postal stationery envelope. Several varieties known, but impossible to identify as is.

Calicut, BTW, has quite a colourful history, if you want to chase it down through Google.

nice stamp, nicely preserved, I am from india, I havent got this stamp.

warm wishes.

Tony - on the colorful history - the town or the stamp?

I think Tony refers to the Town and it's history.

Calicut
The rough weave cotton "Calico" derives
its name from here.

Thanks rod, I will check it out

I think you are probably correct Jeff,
it most probably is an RPO strike.

From what I can gather there was no rail
going completely up the west coast of India.
It truncated at Mangalore the busy sea port.

Depending where your letter was heading
there is good reason it would be headed
up the coast and sorted on the train overnight,
to be re bagged at Mangalore for on sending.

On this rail map of 1950
you can see no rail (black lines)
going north from mangalore to Goa.

Calicut is 200km south of Mangalore.

Rodney, with the greatest deference, I beg to differ. The CDS shows the letters B.O. above the date. These stand for Branch Office, not a defect of personal hygiene. AFAIK, Branch Offices were always stationary, so the nearest to a rail connection might be Calicut Rail(way Station), or something similar.

Purely from memory, most railway cancellations of that era were duplexes, with an RMS killer and a cryptic SET NO. and date circular date stamp.

No problems Tony,
Thanks very much.
We are here to learn
(and to smile at Kirk's humour)

(That still has "RY" after calicut agreed?)

Might very well be CALICUT RY (STN), Rod. But this would be a post office located at Calicut Station, rather than an element of the Railway Mail Service. Probably a branch office under the main Calicut Post Office.

Incidentally, as we both know, Melbourne has a sub-suburb called Travancore, but Victoria has a township called Mangalore. Best (or worst) known for having an airstrip to which flights from Sydney used to be diverted when Essendon or Tullamarine was closed for some reason. It involved an interminable bus ride back to civilisation if you were unlucky enough to be landed there.

WOW, the information is fantastic and I appreciate the time and experience it takes to put all this together. Thank you all folks!

tonymacg is there somehthing I can look at on the stamp that will help identify it from the several varieties?

lok we are discussing india again

i must say the queen looks good in this one eh?

I'm afraid that, as so often with postal stationery, the differences are in the size of the envelope. Completely lost with cut squares like this. The cover being Victorian British India, there was almost certainly a lot more interesting routing information on the cover (cancellations of the post offices it passed through on its way to its destination) lost as well when the vandal cut this corner off.

I don't like cut squares