RAIL CARRIAGE OF NEWSPAPERS
The following extract is taken from the 1899 volume of
Pugh's Queensland Almanac, under 'Postal Information":
Single Newspapers from publishers bearing 2d postage
stamp will be conveyed by railway to all stations, also parcels of newspapers
from publishers up to 1lb. in weight, having a 1d stamp affixed, addressed, and
to be delivered to one person or firm. The newspapers must be fully addressed
and stamped, and to admit of the stamp to be obliterated they must be delivered
to the Railway Parcels Office not later than ten minutes before the train is
due to start.
Newspapers intended for conveyance by mail services
beyond the railway must be sent through the Post Office in parcels not
exceeding 14 lbs.
This was presumably taken from the contemporary official
Postal Guide.
If I read the above extract aright, it means that newspapers
bearing a ½ d stamp could be sent from
one railway station to any other on the system without going through a post
office at all. A series of Railway stamps had been issued in 1894 bearing the
inscription 'NEWSPAPERS AND PARCELS', but this did not include a ½ d stamp, so
the only ½ d stamps available at the time were the ½ d postal adhesive and the
imprinted stamp on newspaper wrappers, which had been introduced in 1892. The
Railways evidently accepted these as payment for transmission of newspapers by
rail, as the money would end up in the Queensland Treasury anyway.
After Federation at the beginning of 1901, the Post Office
became the responsibility of the new Commonwealth Government, while the
Railways remained under the control of Queensland. A new series of Railway
stamps was issued in that year, also inscribed 'NEWSPAPERS AND PARCELS', and
including a ½ d value for the first time. I assume that after a certain date
the Queensland Railways would not have accepted the 1½d adhesive or imprinted
postage stamps for payment of charges for rail transmission of newspapers
direct; at all events the 1899 newspaper wrapper was the last one issued by
Queensland with an imprinted ½ d stamp.
Where a railway station also served as a post office, the
postal obliterator would probably be used to cancel the stamp on newspaper
wrappers for transmission by rail, but where the station was not a post office,
the Railway Parcels obliterator would have to be used. This explains why we
find a very distinctive type of numeral obliterator sometimes used on the
imprinted ½d stamp on newspaper wrappers issued in 1892 or 1895. These were all
low numbers, used at Brisbane suburban stations which were neither Post Offices
nor Receiving Offices; the obliterators consisted of the number within three
concentric circles, the outermost of which was 21 ½ mm in diameter. The numbers
found used on the imprinted stamp are:
1 BRISBANE CENTRAL
2 NORMANBY
3 EXHIBITION
4 BOWEN HILLS
5 MAYNE
6 ALBION
7 WOOLOOWIN
None are common, as the wrapper would normally have been
discarded, and in any case they can only exist on postal items from the period
1892 to about 1901. No. 13 (BOONDALL) is known on a pair of 2d adhesive stamps;
possibly this was used on a parcel of newspapers weighing between 3 and 4lbs.,
but this is only a conjecture. The extract quoted above does not make it clear
whether parcels of newspapers above 1lb. in weight were accepted for railway
transmission without going through a post office.
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