Mail Trains

My grandfather was a station master on the DL&W railroad and my grandmother the post mistress in a small village near Corning NY, so I had many discussions not only about railroads (which I dearly love), but also the handling of the mail via trains. In those days the mailboxes in small villages were in a room of the house of the post master/mistress.
The mail trains were still running when I was a small boy in the late 1940's/early 1950's. The railroad ran not too far behind my grandparent's house. When I knew a mail train was coming, I would run out across the Erie tracks (much to the consternation of my grandmother) to the DL&W station and meet with the agent who would place the outgoing bag on the stanchion. When the train came, I had to stay behind a huge boulder – a flying mailbag thrown out of a 60mph speeding train could do a lot of harm to a young skinny lad. You never knew where the mailbag would land. Sometimes it would take 30 minutes for us to find the mail bag in the brush.
I don't know if this is of any interest - I can add more. Is there a better forum to do so?

Those railroad stories are always fascinating. I suspect they never kept such records way back then, but your comment about "a flying mailbag thrown out of a 60mph speeding train" suggests there must have been quite a number of injuries and back then medical care wasn't exactly around the corner.

By the way, do you have any DL&W RPO postmarks?

I'm not aware of having any such.

Here is one of my Favorite covers with a Train Slogan.

Quite a cover, stallzer. Please do tell more about trains and train post.

That is a great story. I'd love to hear more.

stallzer,
interesting RPO covers.

I'd love to hear more train stories, too.