The “Mail Catcher” Note: Mail Catcher -- an iron rod, or other contrivance, attached to a railroad car for catching a mail bag while the train is in motion. United States mails are carried in
some of the fastest passenger and express trains in the country. Many of these
trains run long distances between important American cities, such as New York
and St. Louis, Chicago and San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles, and Chicago
and New Orleans. In order to maintain fast schedules, these trains stop at only
the larger cities en route. However, with the aid of mail
cranes such as we see in the picture, it is possible for even the smallest
communities situated along the railroad to have adequate mail service at all
times. The mail crane enables the train to pick up a bag of mail without
stopping or slowing down. The crane is located alongside the track, near the
railway station. A mail messenger employed by the railroad or by the local post
office or some other authorized person, attaches the mail bag to the crane a
short time before the train is due. On each side of the mail car of the approaching
train is a steel catcher arm. As the train nears the station, a clerk in the
mail car adjusts one of these catcher arms so that when it passes the crane it
catches the waiting mail bag where it is tied in the center. The mail clerk
then swings the catcher arm into the car and drops the bag on the floor. He
also throws off bags of mail at designated stations where they are picked up by
messengers and carried to the local post offices.
Another Description
Instead of
stopping at every small town to transfer the mail, railway mail trains were
fitted with catcher arms that snatched mailbags off of cranes such as this. As
early as As
tremendously successful as it was, “mail-on-the-fly” still had its share of
glitches. Clerks had to pay special attention to raising the train’s catcher
arm. If they hoisted it too soon, they risked hitting switch targets, telegraph
poles or semaphores which would rip the catcher arm right off the train. Too
late, and they would miss an exchange and each missed exchange netted a clerk Exchanging the mail was a two-part process,
after the clerk snagged the mail bag with the catcher arm, he had to toss out
the mailbag for that station. If a clerk did not kick the mailbag out far
enough, it could get trapped beneath the wheels of the train, bursting open and
sending letters flying everywhere. The clerks called such small disasters
“snowstorms.” On the other hand, too much “oomph” could also cause
difficulties. One poor clerk tossed the mailbag out with such force that it
sailed through the bay window of the station house. The Mail Catcher
Catcher Arm Grabbing
the Mail Watch the Mail Crane in Action (7.52Mb .WAV File) In the early days of
railroading, the engine that pulled the rest of the train was equipped with a
"cow catcher" in the event that the train hit a cow or herd of
cows. If a cow was killed by a train, it was most likely because it got
hit by the cow catcher, not the caboose.
Encyclopaedia Britannica defines a cowcatcher as “an
inclined frame on the front of a railroad locomotive for throwing obstacles off
the track.” The
Cowcatcher was invented by Charles Babbage ( |