Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/390

 356

��The Railway Mail Service.

��to be delivered at the next station ; the pouch is locked and everything is ready for the next delivery and "catch." When the stations at which pouches are caught are within a mile or two of each other, the greatest activ- ity is needed to assort the mail be- tween stations, to avoid carrying mail by destination and subjecting it to con- siderable delay before its delivery by a railway post-office on the train to be met at a point perhaps many miles ahead.

��five feet in length is fixed across the top of the post and so balanced that when relieved of the weight of the pouch it flies up perpendicularly against the post. The pouch used for this pur- pose is made of canvas and is some- what narrower than the ordinary leath- ern pouch. It is lightly suspended by a slender iron rod projecting from the horizontal joist, passed through a ring at the top and lightly held at the bottom in the same manner as at the top. When the pouch is snatched from the

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��'CATCHING" AT FULL SPEED.

��The manner of taking or " catch- ing" the mail from the trackside by some invisible power on a railroad train plunging through space has seemed to many a feat of almost leger- demanic skill, when all that is required is a simple mechanical apparatus and a quick, firm movement of the arm in using it at the right moment. A crane similar in appearance to the oldtime gibbet is erected near the track, and may have served as a warning by its suggestive appearance to some would- be train-wrecker. Its base is a plat- form two feet and a half square, \vith two short steps on top to assist the per- son hanging the pouch ; a post ten feet in height passes up through this plat-

���POUCH HUNG ON "CRANE.'

��crane, the top piece flies up as de- scribed, and a parallel short joist at form near the edge ; a stout joist about the bottom of the pouch drops. The

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