#71 St. Louis – Southwestern Cotton Belt

Mail Express Car

The car has a wooden body and its underframe is also wood with a steel center sill. The truss rods visible along the sides below the floor are bolted through the end sills and strengthen the underframe. The turnbuckles that join the two ends of each rod at the center of the car can be adjusted to keep the car's body straight and level.

The railway post office markings show that the separate mail "apartment," as the post office called it, met the standards for handling U.S. mail. The mail catcher arm on its door could pick up sacks of first class mail at speeds of up to 80 miles per hour. .

60' long mail/express car in 1905, weighs 80,000 pounds,

Produced by American Car & Foundry in 1905

Donated to MOT by the St. Louis - Southwestern Railroad in 1952