Mail Train

Fast Mail Train, Harper's Weekly.

The Cortland News, Friday, August 11, 1882.

Handling the Mails.

   A correspondent of the Cincinnati Enquirer, who rode from that city to Chicago in a postal car, writes as follows:

   A postal car is so arranged that everything is right at hand. To be sure this is convenient, but it makes things very much crowded. There are boxes for letters and boxes for papers, and there are racks for pouches and racks for bags. Then there is a storeroom in front. Some of the boxes are for special cities, and some are for railroads. So it is with the pouches and bags. The poaches for the letters are hung by themselves on hooks with the tops open. Ditto the sacks for the papers. As soon as the wagon load of mail arrives at the car from the post office it is dumped out of the pouches, and the clerks immediately begin to "throw" it. At the post office the people arrange the letters by States. This is all the start the clerks on the cars get. Each box in the car represents either a city or a railroad, and the letters most all be placed in the proper boxes to reach the cities for which they are destined or the railroad connection that will give it the quickest delivery.

   In order to correctly "throw" a State the man so doing most know the location of every city, town, village, hamlet, railroad station and crossing in every county of that State. He must be able to detect the second he sees it a misdirected letter. Misdirected letters are called "nixies." Accompanying each package of letters sent from the post office is a slip of paper with the date stamped upon, and the name of the letters printed thereon. There is also a number stamped on the slip, and that number represents the clerk at the post office who put up the package. In case a nixie is found in a package of letters it is returned by the clerk of the car, who stamps the date on the nixie slip, writes thereon the "misdirection" and signs his name to it.

   Each nixie is charged against the clerk at the post office who permits it to go to the car, and at the end of the month there is a grand hauling over the coals. If too many nixies are set opposite a man's name in a given time he is relieved of the responsibilities of his position. Last night thirty-six detected on one car, and one of them was an official letter written from the Cincinnati post office to a postmaster in a town which doesn't exist

   It may be reasonable to suppose that a man of ordinary intelligence could learn all of the little towns and so forth in one or two States, but when it comes to twelve States it would seem to be an impossibility; but Mr. McGinnis, the man with the best memory in the mail service, can locate every town, railroad station or crossing in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nebraska, Dakota, Montana, California, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia.

   The rapidity with which he works when throwing mail is astonishing. He picks up a handful of letters, and before you imagined he had glanced at it to see where it was destined for he has read the town, the city and State, and chucked it in the box it belongs in. So familiar is he with the location of the boxes he does not have to look up to see where the place is the letter goes, but gives it a flirt in the direction of the proposed receptacle, and it alights in the right place, while he still has his eyes on the letters in his other hand. He throws mail matter as fast as a person could count say for half a minute, but at the end of that time the counter would get left and McGinnis would be going on. There were 120 different pouches on the car during the night, for different roads and cities, and it was necessary that McGinnis should keep in his mind just exactly where each pouch was for, what was in it and when to look it up.

   While throwing letters he was continually being asked by the others where this, that and the other town was, or where such and such a paper or letter would go, and answered each question before it was well out of the interrogator's mouth, never stopping in his work for a second. Mr. McGinnis and his crew handled 161 sacks of mail on their trip last night.

   We ran through a most violent rain storm, but McGinnis never lost him self and could at all times tell just where we were by the motion of the car. He has been in the service for eight years, and is the oldest clerk in his division—that is in service, for he is a young man by years.

   I saw him do something that it is claimed no other man in the service can do, and that was to throw a State without having the boxes labeled. He had the State of Michigan to throw, and he threw it into the boxes used for the State of Kentucky. Thus, he had to improvise boxes as he went along, and had to remember just where he put over a thousand letters.

   After the letters are thrown into the boxes they are taken out and tied up in bundles and chucked into their respective pouches. Care must be exercised not to throw a bundle into the wrong pouch, and it is a mystery how easy one man can retain in his memory which is which and which isn't with so many to choose from. But McGinnis can stand in any part of the car and throw a bundle to any other part of the car with out a miss and without looking.

McLean, N. Y., August 7, 1882.

   Mr. William Clark is building an addition to his house that his brother may make his home with him.

   Every one speaks of the dry weather. Some of the later crops will be almost a failure if we do not have rain and that soon.

   Again we see in our midst Dr. Henry Lanning, who has been on a trip in the western part of the State. He has been engaged in missionary work in Japan for the past nine years and is now home on a visit to his parents. We believe the Doctor expects to return to Japan sometime in September, going by the way of San Francisco, and he will then make the tour round the world. He has spent much time in the Old World viewing, in particular, the hospitals, with the purpose of building one in Japan.

   Our school opens Monday, Aug. 7, with the same teachers as last term. May they be successful in their labors, as our school has ever held high rank among the village schools of the county.

Recommended:

Catskill Archive, The Fast Mail Train: http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/Page0004.Html