Steam & Excursion > It Was Exciting To See The Mail Train Arrive In This Small Town!

Life In small town America in the last century often revolved around the arrival and eparture of trains if the town was lucky enough to be located on a rail line.  We see that played out in this scene from about 1907.

We are in the small Oregon town of Brownsville and Southern Pacific's train #98 on the Oregon Division is just coming into town.  This train is known as the Coburg Mail Train because of the contents that it brings into town.

The photographer appears to be standing on a tendr full of coal on a work train.  In front of him appear to be men feeding the coal into some type of burner on the next car.  If anyone can tell us what that is all about, we would love to know.

Martin



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/17 03:02 by LoggerHogger.

---

Looking at the shadow on the ground, it appears it could be some kind of derrick. Possibly in the lowered position? Possibly a pile driver?

Good catch on the shaddow.  A pile driver makes sense.

Martin

Passed through Brownsville a couple of times last week.  Tracks must be long gone.

LoggerHogger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Life In small town America in the last century
> often revolved around the arrival and eparture of
> trains if the town was lucky enough to be located
> on a rail line.  We see that played out in this
> scene from about 1907.

Martin, a great picture of that era, but I'm recalling times of the early 1950's as a kid in a small, rural western Kansas town on the Rock Island.  

We were regulated to the arrival and departure of mail based upon a particular train we called the "mail train", eastbound and westbound.  The arriving mail could be seen as a largely stuffed canvas mail sack ejected from the doorway of a passing mail car and watching it roll on the ground somewhere in the vicinity on either side of the depot with the mail delivery man awaiting to load it in his pickup truck and deliver it to the post office.  On a few occasions the sack was known to divert its rolling route, angling back to the tracks only to be mangled by the following train wheels.  That required the post office employees and selected others to gather the mangled sack and mail that could be located following the "windsweeping" of the train and any local winds at the time.

As for the departing mail, the same man would usually bring a lesser filled sack and hang it on the mail crane for the next passenger train's mail car to snatch it with the mail hook attached at the car's side doorway.  Very seldom, the hook may have missed the sack.  On such occasion, I don't recall if the train was required to stop and return or if the mail was retrieved for a train the following day.

Nowadays, the arriving mail comes to each town by a "bobtail" delivery truck to the post office in pre-dawn hours returns mid-afternoon for the departing mail all of which is destined to the Wichita terminal for further distribution.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/17 08:54 by rrman6.

rusticmike6 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Passed through Brownsville a couple of times last
> week.  Tracks must be long gone.

Last run was December, 1985

Looks like a pile driver with a collapsible boom. I've always liked this image, and you're right, in the age of instant gratification and no patience there is little to compare to the arrival of a train a century ago.

Thanks, Taylor

Posted from iPhone

the brownsville museum is well worth a visit...in the former SP brownsville depot and somethibng like six rail cars.   also a neat town to look around.  yet aniother GREAT picture Martin.    Arlen

HeislerPower Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
..., in
> the age of instant gratification and no patience
> there is little to compare to the arrival of a
> train a century ago.
>

If I were explaining it to a teenager, I would say that the mail train's arrival was kinda like having everybody's text message "ding" go off at the same time.