Background
The Railway Mail Service (RMS), a Department of the United States Post Office, and its successor the Postal Transportation
Service (PTS), carried most of the mail in the United States between 1890 and 1970.
Established in 1869, the Railway Mail Service provided for the movement of mail by train. Highly trained RMS postal clerks
staffed the Railway Post Office (RPO), a separate car on a passenger train. Mail sorted en route, received a cancellation
just as if it had been mailed at a local post office. On October 1, 1948, the Railway Mail Service was renamed the Postal
Transportation Service. The last railway post office car operated between New York and Washington, D.C. on June 30, 1977.
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as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must
also be obtained by the reader.