Very good update yesterday from
Courier CheckerOn this day 22 years ago, the last Travelling Post Office made its final journey.
The night of 9/10 January 2004 marked the end of sorting mail on moving trains – a service that had run for 166 years.
Travelling Post Offices - with sorting on the way - ran from 1838 to 2004, and then (carrying mail but not sorting on the move) the last dedicated mail train ran in 2024.
Letters posted have changed out of all recognition. Twenty Five years ago, we at Well House Consultants produced a printed brochure that we mailed out twice a year to around 1000 customers and prospective customers, we invoiced by post, paid bills by cheque in the post and received payments from customers in the same way. A trip into Melksham to pay in cheques at our local bank branch was a regular undertaking.
The local branches of all of the big banks have closed, and although concerned we ourselves have not really missed them. There is still a Nationwide and a Coventy in town, and a Post Office too. And the Post Office still has that tradition of people queueing out of the door with less than half the five tills staffed. People for the most part are posting parcels; my own visits are very occasional - before Christmas to mail out a handful of hard copies of the Melksham Timetable to operators based away from the town, and last week to email a legal document for which I needed proof of posting and with no online alternative being available.
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