Note 28 — Chapter IV

The first travelling Post Office was placed on the Grand Junction Railway (the connecting Railway between Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham) on the 6th of July, 1837. On the 1st of January, 1839, the travelling Post Offices commenced running through, between London and Liverpool. The first travelling Post Office in Ireland was established on the Great Southern and Western Railway, between Dublin and Cork, on the 1st of January, 1855. They are now on every important line of railway in the United Kingdom, but they are not available as the travelling post offices are over almost all Europe, for the receipt of letters as they arrive at and stop at stations. In France, Belgium, Holland, all Germany, Austria and the Austrian dominions, Switzerland and Italy, there are letter boxes and receiving apertures on each side of them, into which letters can be thrown until the very moment that the trains to which they are attached are leaving the stations; no late fee is necessary for such letters, in fact a late letter fee is not known on the Continent, with one exception—Paris. In that city, since the 9th of May, 1863, letters can be posted at the Bureaux d’Arrondissement until half an hour after the general closing of the boxes, and until an hour after their closing at the Grand Bureau.