Post offices and train stations

[Philster]

Philly, PA, USA: big train station and Post Office are across the street from each other.

[Will_Repair]

@Uncertain

Are other cities like this?

In Nashville, Tenn. and Orlando, Fla. the main post office is by the airport. (And Atlanta, Ga. too I think.)

[Br_er_Lapin]

Has anyone yet mentioned that there’s a large post office across the street from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia?

[Kevbo]

@friedo

… In fact, they used to have special rail cars where they would sort mail as the train was moving, then snag a bag of mail on a hook as the train passed through a station, to be picked up by the local mailman later.

Close, but not quite right:

The mail TO a locality was simply slung out the door of the mail car onto the platform as the train passed. This was part of the reason the freight/baggage and passenger sections of the platform were segregated…You didn’t want passengers hit by the mail bags.

There was a hook alright, but that was used to snag the OUTGOING mail from a locality. The mailbag had a cinch strap halfway along it’s length. It was suspended from a cranenear the track, and the mailman in the mail car would operate a stout hook mounted to the mail car, snagging the mail bag by the “waist” created by the central cinch strap.

[drewbert]

@Will Repair

In Nashville, Tenn. and Orlando, Fla. the main post office is by the airport. (And Atlanta, Ga. too I think.)

True, but in Nashville the old 1930’s-era main post office downtown (now the Frist Center for the Visual Arts) is right next to Union Station.

[Mark_Ryle]

In New York there is, as the OP said, the James A. Farley Building, 10001, across from Pennsylvania Station, but there is also Grand Central Post Office, 450 Lexington Avenue, 10017, behind Grand Central Terminal.

[TheLoadedDog]

@MikeS

Chicago’s old post office isn’t particularly near any train stations — it’s about three blocks away from the nearest currently active railway terminus, Union Station. However, there are several Chicago stations that have been vacated & torn down, and one of these might have been closer. What’s more, the tracks leading to Union Station actually run under the Old Post Office, so it’s possible that they just did their offloading directly there.

Another possibility is that they were linked by the narrow gauge underground trains of the Chicago Tunnel Company

A 60-mile, two-foot gauge electric railroad that operated 149 locomotives and over 3000 freight cars in small tunnels forty feet below the streets of downtown Chicago.

The Illinois Tunnel Company ( later known as the Chicago Tunnel Company) started operating trains through the freight tunnels in 1906. The small four wheel electric locomotives hauled pony freight cars between stores, office buildings, post office facilities, warehouses, factories, and railroad stations. The tiny cars carried packages, goods, mail, food, coal, cinders, and occasionally people!

[GorillaMan]

@TheLoadedDog

Another possibility is that they were linked by the narrow gauge underground trains of the Chicago Tunnel Company

London had a similar dedicated underground mail system, recently taken out of service: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/c.karslake/mailrail/html/home.html

[TheLoadedDog]

London’s was way cool. But I think Chicago’s was cooler. It was a general goods system with a grid of tunnels under the streets, sidings into customers’ basements, and it did more than mail. I’d love to have seen it.

[BJMoose]

Wichita’s old main post office (still a U.S. Court building) was several blocks away from the old Union Station (and also the separate Missouri Pacific depot). But we finally got with the program - today’s main mail facility is adjacent to the airport.