The first railway post office car began operating in 1862 on the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, a predecessor of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. In 1884, the Post Office Department decided it needed a fast-mail service between the east and west coasts.
This article about the St. Paul road’s fast mail trains is from the April, 1905 issue of The World Today. Click image to download a 4.9-MB PDF of the complete article. Click here to download the complete volume of 1905 issues of that periodical (106-MB PDF).
Getting the contract to carry the mail could be prestigious, because it meant that the post office believed a railroad was both fast and reliable. But it could also be a pain. On one hand, the federal government demanded a discount to compensate it for all of the assistance it had provided the railroads — even from railroads that had received no federal assistance. On the other hand, the Post Office demanded that its mail trains be given priority over all other trains.
The above article notes that in 1884 the Post Office “approached one of the great railway systems of the Middle West having direct lines to both Omaha and Saint Paul” about providing fast mail service for Chicago-St. Paul and Chicago-Omaha segments of a coast-to-coast operation. That railroad, which could only have been the Chicago & North Western, declined the honor, saying that it wouldn’t be good for its bottom line.
Instead, the Post Office gave the Chicago-St. Paul contract to the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul and the Chicago-Omaha contract to the Burlington Route. These railroads would get mail from the New York Central and Pennsylvania (and eventually Illinois Central and other railroads) in the east and deliver it to the Great Northern in St. Paul, which would take it to Seattle, and Union Pacific in Omaha, which would take it to California.
Starting in 1892, the St. Paul road proudly noted on its Chicago-Twin Cities timetable that it was the “Fast Mail Line” in this corridor. It ran two fast mail trains a day in each direction. One of them went from Minneapolis to Chicago in 12 hours and 35 minutes, nearly 2 hours faster than its premiere train, which it would later call the Pioneer Limited. At that time, the fast mail trains carried coaches between Milwaukee and Minneapolis, but travelers wanting sleeping accommodations were advised to take other trains.
The schedules were still like this in 1899 when the Chicago & North Western suddenly decided to get competitive. It introduced a new train in the February Official Guide with the cumbersome name of Duluth and Superior Limited and St. Paul Fast Mail (but Chicago Fast Mail in the other direction. This was really two trains: one went from Milwaukee to Minneapolis via Madison and Eau Claire. The other went from Chicago to Duluth and Superior via Madison in Eau Claire. Between Madison and Eau Claire, the two trains were joined into one.
The remarkable thing was that, despite the shuffling of cars in Madison and Eau Claire, the overnight train was able to go from Chicago to Minneapolis in just 10-1/2 hours, or better than two hours faster than the St. Paul road’s fastest Fast Mail. Moreover, unlike the St. Paul’s Fast Mail, the St. Paul Fast Mail carried both sleeping and chair cars, albeit only from Milwaukee to Minneapolis/St. Paul and Chicago to Duluth/Superior. Chicago passengers wanting sleeping accommodations to Minneapolis would have to wait until the train reached Madison.
Fast mail was such a generic term that no one could trademark it, so there was nothing to stop the C&NW or any other railroad from calling a train the Fast Mail. It is probable that the train did carry some mail to cities like Madison that weren’t on the St. Paul road’s main line. I can’t help but wonder, however, if the C&NW was regretting rejecting the fast mail contract in 1884 and trying to prove to the Post Office that it could be faster and more reliable than the St. Paul road.
It took several months for the St. Paul road to respond. In November, 1899, it reduced the time of its fastest mail train to 11 hours and 5 minutes. Meanwhile, C&NW backed off on its schedule slightly, increasing the time to 10 hours and 40 minutes. In 1900, the St. Paul met that schedule with one of its mail trains, and also included both sleeping cars and coaches on that train from Milwaukee to St. Paul (with a parlor car for first-class passengers between Chicago and Milwaukee). Unlike the C&NW train, which made 19 stops between Chicago and Minneapolis, the St. Paul Fast Mail could meet a 10-2/3-hour timetable only by making it a non-stop train between Milwaukee and St. Paul.
The Burlington, which had entered the Chicago-Twin Cities market in 1886 and soon had trains that were competitive with the St. Paul and North Western, decided not to try to compete with these fast mail trains. It had its own Chicago-Omaha fast mail contract and was satisfied to run an overnight Twin Cities train with the generic name of “Limited Express” that it liked to call the “finest train in the world.” In fact, it was equipped similarly to the Pioneer Limited and North-Western Limited and operated on similar schedules.
In 1901, the C&NW backed off even more, increasing the Chicago-Minneapolis time of its St. Paul Fast Mail to 11 hours and 5 minutes. In 1902 it gave up entirely, with the train then taking 13 hours and 25 minutes, a time that the St. Paul road was more than willing to match. C&NW still called the southbound train the Chicago Fast Mail, but it changed the name of the northbound train to Duluth and St. Paul Express.
One reason why the C&NW may have given up was that it was competing against itself as much as against the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul. After all, throughout this period, its own North-West Limited was taking three hours longer to get between Chicago and the Twin Cities than its fast mail trains. With its smoker-buffet-library car, the North-West Limited was more comfortable, but no doubt many passengers were intrigued by the potential thrill of riding what must have been one of the fastest trains in the world at the time.
For a brief period at the turn of the century, travelers could get between Chicago and the Twin Cities in little more than 10 hours, an average speed of more than 40 mph. After 1901, it would be about 30 years before that would again be possible.