enabling people in stations to post mail whilst the train was stationary. The post-marks from TPOs are valued by philatelists. During 1866, apparatus for picking up and setting down mailbags without stopping was installed at Slough and Maidenhead. This concept had first been patented in 1838 by Nathaniel Worsdell, first deputy mayor of Crewe, and carriage and wagon superintendent at Crewe Works. Use of the system became prevalent over the following decades, it became commonplace for TPO carriages to be fitted with several for handling automated mail pickups/dropoffs, sometimes being furnished with four separate arms per carriage. By 1914, there were 126 TPO carriages in operation throughout the United Kingdom. They were only referred to as TPOs for the first time in 1928, prior to this, the common term for mail carriages had been Railway Post Offices (RPOs). Following the nationalisation of the railways and the formation of British Rail (BR) in the late 1940s, TPOs continued to be operated by this new state-owned company. However, it was during the BR era that the transportation of mail by rail acquired a negative reputation for unreliability due to services frequently experiencing delays, typically resulting in late arrivals. By 1963, the year of the Great Train Robbery, there were 49 mail trains in service, with between one and five TPOs being typically attached to passenger trains, while complete TPO trains were routinely being operated between London and Aberdeen and Penzance. The final mail drop from a moving train using automatic apparatus was carried out on 4 October 1971 at a location just north of Penrith. Although there were in excess of 40 TPOs running at this time, item transfers were only carried out at stations after this date. During the 1980s, BR planners endeavoured to rejuvenate numerous aspects of its operations and to better fulfil customer demands. Under the policy of Sectorisation, the TPOS and all rail mail operations were consolidated into their own business unit, Rail Express Systems (RES). This reorganisation under its own management team led to a new focus of its operations on the specific needs of its primary customer, the Royal Mail (RM). Seeking to rejuvenate rail mail, RES devised a £150 million strategy that focused on long-distance services that worked in conjunction with a central hub based in London at its heart, known as Railnet. During late 1993, RED and RM had signed a 13-year deal with