Operating RPO?

[wallyworld]

Did any firm ever produce an operating version of a railroad post office car? If not, I am surprised no one ever did. Somewhere in the dim recesses of my memory I am thinking that American Flyer may have in S Scale. It seems it would have been simple enough to engineer with a track contact to trigger a normally open "hook" to grab the mail bag. After reading the impressive isue on RPO service in Classic Trains- I was thinking of adding an RPO run to my layout...

[dwiemer]

Flyer did indeed have one.  In fact, it was shown on today's episode of "I Love Toy Trains" on RFD.  It was  a great accessory, but I am a Lionel guy and have not seen one in 3 rail.

dennis

[thor]

Both Hornby Dublo and Tri-ang did in the UK in 00.  I had one around 1966 I think, it could be a hoot if you went too fast the mailbags could shoot a fair distance!

[Nick12DMC]

Hornby still do a travelling post office coach in OO. I had one till recently in LMS colours with a matching rake of coaches. It looks good pulled by a LMS Duchess class in crimson lake.

This was based on the real UK travelling post office coach. The GPO film "Night Mail" shows this in action with its collector gear.

I sold all my British OO to change to 3 rail O. And have no regrets. My son finds O alot easier to handle as Hornby are headed for more super detailed models. Great for adults but its sort of left the kids out of things.

Regards

Nick

 

 

 

 

[Anonymous]

The American Flyer mail car was the 718, produced from 1946-1954.  It was available in red, green and maroon.  I have the maroon version (which is quite hard to find) with it's original mail bags and stand.  This is a really fun car to operate and is always a hit with visitors to my layout.  Of course, there's a knack to hitting the button to activate is at just the right time.  When it shoots the mail bag out, it always flies a good distance!  American Flyer did produce an O gauge version of this car in the late prewar era when Gilbert had recently taken over and was making S scale trains that ran on O gauge track that were the precursor to their postwar S gauge line.

I'm also a collector of Tri-ang OO trains and have two Transcontinental (North American style) operating RPO's, but, sadly, no mail bags or mechanism to operate them.

[artyoung]

At York a few years ago (the last time Lionel displayed in the Red Hall) they had a B&O scale heavyweight with the Flyer mechanism mounted inside, apparently to see if anyone would be interested in it as a production item. Haven't seen anything since, but I did build my own inside an aluminum combine. I flipped the mechanism to pick-up on the right-hand side of the car (a lot of careful bending - the swing arm had to have all it's bends completely reversed - if you want to try it, heat the metal red hot with a torch to prevent the tabs from breaking off). The hardest part was fitting the sliding shoe into a 2500 series truck. I riveted half the 2500 bottom plate to the shoe half of a freight truck - I couldn't solder it without melting the shoe. A real pain-in-the-a**, but worth it, even though it's not as smooth as the original. I use the #214 mail swing arm accessory and a prewar UCS to operate it.

[mersenne6]

Actually the 3/16 Flyer car was made both  during the pre and post war period.  The 3/16 for 3 rail works just fine although it is a tad under scale for 1/4" to the foot.