Did UP Run Dedicated Express-Mail Trains Trains in the late 40s?

[RGeorge]

Trying to determine if the Union Pacific ran dedicated express-mail trains in the late 1940s/early 1950s such as Santa Fe's famed Fast Mail Express or SP's Klamath?

Any dedicated express-mail trains operating on the Northwestern District?  If so, would passenger Challengers have been assigned to these trains?

Appreciate your help

Bob

[garyla]

According to my 1951 Official Guide, UP trains 5 & 6 (L.A.-Omaha) carried "...only a coach for passengers; no dining car or sleeping cars."  Those were definitely mail/express trains of some sort.  Trains 25 & 26, between Portland, Ore., and Pocatello, Ida., were labeled "Mail Express."

[cnwfan51]

   Not only did they run trains 5 and 6 but 7 and 8 were run between Omaha and Larine Wyo. Larry

[Bob-Fryml]

My copy of the April 1963 Official Guide lists trains nos. 27 & 28 as being equipped with a rider coach only.  These remnants of The Overland Route's most famous train, the San Francisco Overland Limited, carried a lot of mail, express, and occasional REA perishables between Omaha and Laramie, Wyo.  I understand this train connected with The Milwaukee Road's secondary train, the Arrow, a schedule which operated between Chicago and Omaha.

In September 1967, shortly after the nationwide wholesale slaughter of Railway Post Office operations, the Arrow came off.  But into 1968 Milwaukee Road trains nos. 103 and 104, the combined City of Los Angeles / City of San Francisco still carried working R.P.O.s between Chicago and Omaha.  

If I recall correctly, ATSF nos. 9 and 10 were the Chicago - Los Angeles Fast Mail, a pair of trains which connected at Barstow, Calif. with nos. 7 and 8, the Valley Mail.