Royal Mail, Post Office, GPO

Is this one of the last EIIR post boxes to be installed, or is there a stock of these to be used up before CIIIR starts appearing?

29.6.2013 The date has just been identified from Dad's log book.

My brother-in-law, as a senior manager in Postal Engineering, was responsible for the Royal Mail's underground railway maintenance for a few years before his retirement. Very recently it has been announced that part of the system is to be restored as an adjunct to the British Postal Museum, if the final £2 million of £22 million for a new museum can be found.

Another two groups' material in one photo - Benches of the World and Royal Mail & British Telecom.! The view is not spectacular - the carpark of the Police Station/Town Hall and the Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall. This is where you come to recover from the fact that your sister, for the second year running, has sent your birthday card without a stamp - so you have to pay for the stamp and a surcharge - meaning you are paying well over a pound to receive a card!

Going through folders to find space on my hard-drive I found this view. If I hadn't joined the Royal Mail & BT and Street Furniture groups, this would have got dumped! I wonder if an Olympic medal winner lived near one of these, would the gold paint only go on the small red front plate.

The Royal Oak pub is a listed building - details can be found at list.english-heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1192996

I went to post a letter in this box, expecting the collection to have been at 5.30 pm, as it has been since we moved here, to find I was about six hours too late! I guess they pick up as they drop off the posties. As you can see there are later options, which entail longer walks. You don't get a lie in on Saturday - you have to be up even earlier - or I suppose you could email! I suppose it is another excuse for not getting a greetings card off in time for the right day!

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A one-off snap, found while looking for other photos, to be added to the small Royal Mail group's collection.

An illustration from The Wonder Book of Railways of what looks like a Great Western Railway travelling post office. I can see no specific date for the illustration or indeed for the publication, but Great Bear was the largest loco around and the North British Locomotive Company was experimenting with an Electro-Turbo-Loco or steam turbine, which I gather was around 1910. (Having looked at an article in the book on Railways at War, the First World War had started, but doesn't seem to have come to an end, although no dates are mentioned. So I have revised the date to circa 1915.) This a bit early for Paul Townsend's Highbridge layout, (see scalefour.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=1867&sta... for details) but I thought he might like to see what would have been passing in an earlier era. I don't think the postal staff had to travel in those positions! This illustration had been uploaded after this photo had sparked a conversation on Flickr about the Highbridge mail apparatus This photo is now here at www.ipernity.com/doc/364457/26454919

Elsie was my grandmother.

This rather shabby phone box, beside the A259 in East Dean, East Sussex, appears, from the top of a passing bus, to be operational. One wonders, given the state of the exterior paintwork, if that will remain the situation for much longer. 20.7.2023 - I have just seen a news item, about four later models of phone boxes being given 'Listed' status. In the article it is reported that the Ofcom regulator has ruled that public phone boxes must be retained in working order, in areas of poor mobile phone connectivity, places where there are above average levels of suicides or 999 emergency calls and use by vulnerable groups making calls to agencies like Childline. This one, deep in a South Downs valley probably falls into the poor connectivity category, but could also need to be there, as the neighbouring bus stops are the nearest, on a frequently served bus route, to Beachy Head, a sadly notorious location for suicides.