Volunteers left shaken and stirred after heritage railway bans Royal Mail train, despite it operating on 'James Bond' line for 20 years without incident.
Almost 90 years since W.H. Auden's poem 'Night Mail' featured in a documentary of the same name, demonstration postal trains have been cancelled at the eleventh hour at the Nene Valley Railway after, according to volunteers, an over zealous manager demanded, 48 hours before the event, that the Royal Mail carriages be modified. Modifications demanded include additional safety bars (these would prevent mail bags from being dropped from the train) and a safety harness system for volunteers in the carriage. One volunteer said “It's safe to say there was no way we would be able to do this in time. We're very disappointed with the decision.” The railway is also home to the only surviving Royal Mail carriage from the 1963 Great Train Robbery and the heritage railway also featured in the James Bond film Octopussy.
Such mail bag exchanges used to happen at night and up to speeds of 70mph, as the train lurched from side to side. It was a dangerous operation but all the staff knew what was going on, what to do and took the appropriate precautions. Picking up mail bags without stopping, enabled mail trains to significantly reduce journey times between England and Scotland.
The Nene Valley Railway, which recently announced it would close if it couldn't raise £300,000, was asked to comment, but didn't reply – some FB pages turning off comments when volunteers have attempted to put their side. Mail drops at the nearby Great Central Railway – which operate at a much higher speed – are not affected and have proved to be extremely popular with visitors over the years. Some Nene Valley volunteers have suggested that there will be an exodus of volunteers from Peterborough to Loughborough.
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