The following post is transcribed from “Arkansas Railroad History” facebook page, posted February 10, 2017.

Back in the day, MoPac issued a passenger train line up at Little Rock with information about train operations each day. Much of this dealt with handling of the large volume of mail and express traffic that was still being carried by passenger trains. This document covers some of the Little Rock details for January 15, 1965.

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This document shows all passenger cars on hand at Little Rock Union Depot (LRUD) on the morning of January 15, 1965. The cars in the “chair car” column are actually box express cars. Coach 1190 was a modernized heavyweight coach, 60 seat capacity. Cars 1007 and 1017 were heavyweight baggage-mail cars with a 30-foot railway post office compartment.

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This wire, generated at Texarkana, shows cars on hand and cars dispatched at Texarkana, which was a major mail and express sorting point for most traffic moving into the southwest USA.

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This partial consist of Train #8 out of Texarkana included 999998, a passenger train articulated piggyback flat with one empty truck trailer and one loaded with mail to St. Louis. Car 879 was a heavyweight MP baggage car with mail from San Antonio to Memphis. The car would be switched from #8 to #38 at Little Rock for movement on to Memphis.

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Much of the mail traffic was southbound, without a corresponding volume of mail northbound. PRR express boxcars were loaded with bundles of empty mail sacks for movement back north. Charles Witsell was the longtime station agent at LRUD, until Amtrak day, May 1, 1971. There was a difference between mail sacks and mail pouches. Sacks were large duffle bag sized canvas bags stuffed full of mail or parcel post. Mail pouches were the smaller oval sacks which were hung from mail cranes and picked up by Railway Post Office clerks on the fly as the train passed a station without stopping.

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Train #37, originated not at Memphis Union Station (now closed) but at a makeshift MP passenger station at 43 East Calhoun in Memphis. Note the large volume of mail that this train brought back to Little Rock… one car for Little Rock, another for movement on train #31 to Alexandria, one for Texas, and one for Hope, AR and ultimately Shreveport. The Hope car was tacked on the rear of Texas Eagle #1 and dropped at Hope – thus the reason for #1’s very brief stop at that station.

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Even as early as 1965, mail and express traffic was being diverted to freight service. No. 61 was a “hot” through freight which carried a substantial volume of mail and express, as can be seen from this wire. Note the large volume of mail and express moving to Texarkana. Both the Postal Transportation Service and Railway Express Agency maintained large sorting facilities, where mail or express was unloaded, resorted and reloaded to different destinations. Bulk mail from New York bound for El Paso, Dallas, Austin and Houston might thus be in the same car out of New York to Texarkana, then separated into individual cars going to each of the destinations. Railway Express refrigerator cars were being used for mail and express, as were PRR express boxcars. The reason for diversion of this traffic to freight is uncertain — the consignee might be paying a lesser rate for freight, but it may have been more a matter of schedules and consists maxed out on #7, which was the workhorse mail & express train out of St. Louis.

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Comments appreciated from anyone having additional information about these operations.

Bill Pollard