Who still does it for demonstration purposes? Cheers! Jim

Jimbo, Last time I saw it done was at your old alma mater.

Hi Jim:Minnesota Trans. Museum's Osceola & St. Croix Valley Railway tourist operation has a working mail crane just east of the Osceola, Wisconsin station. On occasion they will demonstrate catching mail on the fly using their NP 1102 tripple combine. I suspect that they do this only for special occasions as the tourist train normally doesn't blow thru the station like the old Soo Line expresses to Sault Ste. Marie or Duluth.Thanks!

Yep.. we still pull out the SR 49 for special events like Rail Days and such, but I was just curious to see if anybody else was going for it. Always glad to get ideas for preservation articles, columns, etc. Drop me a note, guys! Jim Wrinn, jwrinn@trainsmag.com

We made our first attempts at catching mail on the fly at OERM in June of this year. We set up our mail crane on top of the platform and had several passes at it. We grabbed the bag, but it would not stay in the hook. We believe that part of the problem is the fact that our mail crane is intended to be spiked directly to the ties, and the temporary location we utilized on top of our platform had it up almost a foot too high. We had a great time trying it in any event, and will try again next year.Also- what role does the speed of the train play in a successful catch? Is their a minimum speed required to keep the bag in the hook?Some pictures of the event are on our ATSF RPO 60 page:http://www.oerm.org/pages/sf60.html

John,At Spencer, we noticed that the train had to be going by at 10-15 mph for the mail bag to stay in the hook. Come visit! Jim

Hi Jim:The Pacific Southwest Railway Museum has been catching mail on the fly for Postal Hertiage Days for the past four years. Works very well for us using our former ATSF RPO. We have also cancelled mail on our train from Campo, California to Tecate, BC Mexico. Great fun!Jim