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By Mail Train through the Night

By Vagn Jørgensen

For decades a large part of the interprovincial mail has been sorted in mail trains. But the age of the mail trains is drawing to a close.


The activity in the railway area in the Copenhagen Postal Centre is hectic. It is an ordinary Wednesday evening after 9 p.m., and 9.29 is departure time for train no. 7593 consisting of four mail wagons loaded with mail destined for Fredericia. Fork-lift truck after fork-lift truck is taking mail bags to the open doors. Busy hands from inside the mail train catch the bags. Soon there are no more bags left.

Two minutes to departure. A couple of employees from the Copenhagen Postal Centre are getting off. They are not going. But eight of the others who loaded the train are. Their working day has only just begun. They belong to the by now drastically reduced number of employees at Post Denmark who are still serving in the mail wagons – the rolling postal centres, which have been sorting mail to the provinces every night for more than a century whilst the mail trains were thundering through the dark.

Departure without Warning

The departure from the Copenhagen Postal Centre is different from what you normally experience with the Danish state-owned railway company, DSB. No whistling and no uniformed train guard on the platform. The employees on train no. 7593 close the doors themselves. Without warning the train is starting to leave. To the staff in the mail wagon this is quite normal. To them departure is a signal for busyness.

Their task consists of sorting 50,000 letters for Jutland during the next four hours and they start at once. The mail wagons have hardly any windows. It is dark outside – inside neon tubes provides strong lightning for the rolling place of work.

In the mid 1960’s the mail train service numbered about 600 employees. The mail trains served the widely ramified sections of both the DSB and private railways and handled of a considerable part of the daily mail sorting in Denmark. Nowadays, nine, big postal centres up and down the country are handling the vast majority of the sorting and the mail train service has been reduced to three trains and 48 men. Every night, the existing trains run on the section Copenhagen-Fredericia and Fredericia-Copenhagen respectively and the work itself has not changed much since the palmy days.

As soon as train no. 7593 begins to move, the postal workers start sorting the mail. Bags are opened, the contents poured out, and the mail sorted in shelves even to the smallest villages. The shelves are placed along the walls of the wagon. When a set of shelves has been filled up, the letters are thrown into mailbags provided with tags med with the names of the towns the mail is bound for. Places like 8990 Fårup, 9883 Gjerlev J, 8981 Spentrup, 8970 Havndal … The mail bags is a study of the geography of Jutland.

The sorting work takes place standing up and is not interrupted no matter if everything swings and sways because the train is running fast – or if it is suddenly braking to a halt so vigorously that wheels and rains are squealing so that a weak soul may fear the worst. The mail train staff has long ago developed the same technique as sailors who are swaying with the ship and know all its sounds.

The Last Train is Leaving Soon

The average age of the staff is great. During the last many years it has been evident that the mail train service would be discontinued and consequently, hardly any new people have been employed. On the other hand, the old staff has been sticking it out for many years. As mail train manager Karl Pedersen puts it: Either you quit after a month because you cannot stand the always being on the move, or you carry on for 30 years.

The tunnel across the Great Belt will open on 1st June this year, and that will be the end of the mail trains. It takes about an hour and fifteen minutes to sail across the Belt. Apart from a short coffee break the duration of voyage is used for further sorting. The Great Belt Fixed Link means that the time of crossing is reduced to seven minutes and the total travelling time between Copenhagen and Fredericia shortened by more than an hour. And that is not enough time for sorting.

Instead, fast goods trains, which can run 140 km/hour, will replace the mail trains. The faster transport and modern sorting technology at the postal centres make it possible to bring the mail to the postal centres in time for local sorting.

Stop on the Way

The only stop of train no. 7593 on the way to Korsør is the Postal Centre in Ringsted. After a short shunting the train arrives to the postal centre where new mail bags are loaded into the wagons. Already before the train leaves the platform, people are busy opening the bags and sorting the contents. 7490 Avlum, 7480 Vildbjerg, 7470 Karup J, 7451 Sunds…

The postal workers on the mail trains know each other well. Their shifts are 24 hours of work and 24 hours of leisure. Twice a week the Jutlanders spend the night in Copenhagen, and twice a week the Zealanders stay overnight in Fredericia. When spending the night away from home, many of them share a flat, cook together, and go on small excursions together. They know everything about each other’s wives and children and this has created unique solidarity among the men with a friendly way of talking, good natured banter, and a professional attitude to the work.

In Korsør train no. 7593 makes a short wait while the locomotive is disengaged. Then the mail wagons are shunted into the car deck where there are already goods wagons filled with parcel post. It is almost a small hint from the near future that it will soon be over.


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