Photo Date?

[bill613a]

I'm not 100% sure on this but I think the correct date is 1958.

[SD70Dude]

I can't see any photo

[Miningman]

I'm gonna take a guess here but I believe he is talking about todays Photo of the Day showing a MoPAC RPO in ' 1968' would had to be 1958. 
Not that any of us are mind readers.

[Flintlock76]

I did some checking, and the absolute end of RPO service was on June 30, 1977.  It was a run from New York to Washington DC.

That "Photo of the Day" could  be from 1968, assuming it's not a typo. There's no clues otherwise in the picture that would nail down a date for us.

[Miningman]

Yeah who knows what the heck the fella is referring to. The Photo of the Day caption states most RPO was pulled in 1967, yet dates this photo to 1968 but there were some routes that continued. 

[bill613a]

I assumed that using the term photo date would be enough of a reference but I was mistaken. Mea culpa. The photo is from April 22, 1958 and is of train No. 9, the wb MISSOURIAN (STL-KC) which was an overnite train heavy on the mail.

[rcdrye]

There were a number of overnight trains that retained working RPOs until discontinued (PRR's Manhattan Limited springs to mind).  Other railroads carried generous quantities of less-than-first-class "storage mail".  Milwaukee Road's Fast Mail between Chicago and the Twin Cities also carried RPOs to the end.

[Overmod]

Note that "storage mail" need not require presence of an RPO in the consist.

As Mr. McGonigal of Trains pointed out (in 2006) only eight RPO routes made it throough to Amtrak day, and the 'last' RPO ran, not in a passenger train but a dedicated M&E train under PC and then Conrail operation to 1977.  (This could be notable for some interesting high speed in the middle of the night!).   Improvements in sorting and distribution made the advantage of 'intercity' presort less and less advantageous in the Corridor until 'it was time to let it go.'