Tramway Letter Boxes
We recently received the donation of a tramcar letterbox, originating from Newcastle and once attached to a tramcar as a means of supplementing the postal system in urban areas and quite widespread in their day.
The initial contact was an intriguing one and read:
I was advised to contact yourself regarding a mailbox an elderly lady friend of mine who had family work for Royal Mail/post office. She has a wonderful collection of postboxes! There is one she would like to donate to the museum If it’s something you can use.
It is a mailbox which was last used on a tramcar in Gosforth. It has spent its later years hidden away in her garage. The research I have found they were hung on the tram during the day and collected when the postman did his rounds and taken back to the sorting office! Guessing it will need a little work to bring it back to its best but hope it will be of interest.
These sorts of query are always wonderful to receive and this one led to a correspondence that saw the letterbox arrive at Beamish earlier in the week. At present I have not had a chance to do any research on this subject, but wonder if any blog readers have done so? The Royal Mail museum collection has an example and a few others are dotted around, including one mounted on Liverpool Horse Tram 43 which is on display at the Birkenhead Tramway depot.
Looking at the box it is clearly designed to hang over the dash panel, the door being obscured for security and the rubber stoppers protecting the paintwork. I would imagine it did once have some lettering or a plate on it but nothing remains of this.
An initial thought is to restore it and then fit it to Newcastle 114 for events etc. The chain and clip would appear to be original and presumably these are what secure the box to the tram when in service.
Below: Liverpool 43 carries a portable letterbox on its dash panel as seen below. Though of a different design, the similarity is apparent. Huddersfield trams carried boxes mounted on a special bracket, much like locomotive lamp bracket, but that deems to be a particular feature of that system. I’d be interested to hear from anyone with more information on this subject…
While not a mail box but each day mail bags were carries on the easten counties buses service 203 between Framlingham and Woodbride Suffolk
Often two bags which were chained to the handrails at the rear entrance to a single decker bus in the 1940 during and after war 11 and after.
I’m sure we have one still at Heaton Park from Manchester. It was used in 2009 on the works car event and I’m sure there are photos somewhere.
Sheffield 189 still has one on its platform and was used on the Sheffield system. Sheffield 74 has the slip board in the side windows for when its a postal car. Leeds also used them and I’ve seen pictures somewhere of a horsfield with one on the dash
I’m the Information Officer for the Letter Box Study Group. These boxes were fixed to trams to provide a postal service to outlying districts. Often they would be attached to the last tram of the day to provide a late evening facility and save the poster from trekking into town.
A number of tram systems used these boxes with varying degrees of success. George Staddon tells us in The Tramways of Sunderland that a box was placed on one tram on each of the seven routes (except The Docks) to arrive in town by 8pm. It wasn’t a success as on a typical night only 21 letters were posted in all 7 boxes. Crich have 3 boxes and Wirral one so yours is a quite exciting find.
These boxes were also used abroad, Vicinal car AR.86 was fitted with one for the Baie De Somme Fete Vapour in April 2016.
Good luck with the restoration.
Hello Paul. I’m working with Crich on an exhibition about the carriage of mail and parcels by tram. I’m up in Newcastle 23-25 August – any chance I could come and see your box, and anything else you might have that’s relevant? Perhaps you could drop me an email please.