Editing Railway Mail Service (section)

==History==
George B. Armstrong, manager of the Chicago Post Office, is generally credited with being the founder of the concept of en route mail sorting aboard trains which became the Railway Mail Service.  Mail had been carried in locked pouches aboard trains prior to Armstrong's involvement with the system, but there had been no organized system of sorting mail en route, to have mail prepared for delivery when the mail pouches reached their destination city.<ref name="White 475-6">{{White-Passenger-1978|pages=475–476}}</ref>

[[File:Pioneer Zephyr, RPO section.jpg|thumb|200px|The [[railway post office|RPO]] section of the ''[[Pioneer Zephyr]]'']]In response to Armstrong's request to experiment with the concept, the first [[railway post office]] (RPO) began operating on the [[Chicago and North Western Railway]] between [[Chicago]] and [[Clinton, Iowa]], on August 28, 1864.<ref name="White 475-6" />  The concept was successful, and was expanded to other railroads operating from Chicago, including the [[Chicago, Burlington and Quincy]], [[Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad|Chicago and Rock Island]], [[Pennsylvania Railroad|Pennsylvania]] and the [[Erie Railroad|Erie]].

By 1869 when the Railway Mail Service was officially inaugurated,<ref name="White 475-6" /> the system had expanded to virtually all of the major [[Rail transport|railroads]] of the [[United States]], and the country was divided into six operating divisions.  A superintendent was over each division, all under the direction of George B. Armstrong, who had been summoned from Chicago to [[Washington, D.C.]], to become general superintendent of the postal railway service.  Armstrong served only two years as general superintendent before resigning because of failing health.  He died in Chicago on May 5, 1871, two days after his resignation.

Armstrong's successor in Chicago, [[George Bangs]], was appointed as the second general superintendent of the postal railway service.  Bangs encouraged the use of fast mail trains, trains made up entirely of mail cars, traveling on expedited schedules designed to accommodate the needs of the Post Office rather than the needs of the traveling public.

[[Image:RPO-cancel-w.jpg|thumb|Railway Mail Service (note the "RMS" in the obliterator) postal cancellation]]
In 1890, 5,800 postal railway clerks provided service over {{convert|154800|mi|km}} of railroad.  By 1907, over 14,000 clerks were providing service over {{convert|203000|mi|km}} of railroad.  When the post office began handling parcel post in 1913, [[Terminal Railway Post Office]] operations were established in major cities by the RMS to handle the large increase in mail volume.  The Railway Mail Service reached its peak in the 1920s, then began a gradual decline with the discontinuance of RPO service on branchlines and secondary routes.  After 1942, [[Highway Post Office]] (HPO) service was utilized to continue en route sorting after discontinuance of some railway post office operations.  As highway mail transportation became more prevalent, the Railway Mail Service was redesignated as the Postal Transportation Service.

Abandonment of routes accelerated in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and many of the remaining lines were discontinued in 1967.  On June 30, 1974, the [[Cleveland]] and [[Cincinnati]] highway post office, the last HPO route, was discontinued.  The last railway post office operated between [[New York City|New York]] and Washington, D.C., on June 30, 1977.

A large bust and monument to Armstrong is displayed in the north side of Chicago's Loop Station Post Office.