Fast Mail: 1912

The patent database has numerous entries assigned to the Hupp Automatic Mail Exchange Company. None, however, seem to match the photographed devices exactly. The National Postal Museum has a 4 minute film, Mail by Rail, which shows some mail cranes in action.

Taft Sees New Mail Device

Watches Operations of Invention to Receive and Deliver From Trains

President Taft, accompanied by Maj. Thomas L. Roads, military aid, yesterday afternoon motored to Chesapeake Junction, on the Chesapeake Beach Railway, near the District Line station, to inspect personally the working of an automatic mail delivering and catching device. President Taft made a critical examination of the appliances, both on the ground and the equipment inside of the mail car of the test train of the Chesapeake Beach Railway.

He made a trip on the train inside the mail car and watched the automatic device deliver and take in the mail, the train running at a speed of approximately 40 miles an hour. Later he took position on the ground near the appliance, and saw a rapidly flying train pick up and deliver the mail pouches. He was deeply interested.

P.J. Schardt, president of the Railway Mail Clerks' Association; Mr. Hupp, owner of the device, and W.F. Jones, president and general manager of the Chesapeake Beach Railway, were present.

I remember seeing this type of contraption depicted in old cartoons from the 1960s, but never thought it would be an actual way of loading mail sacks into moving trains! Fascinating!