Maynard-Stanway Mail Distributing System

The Maynard-Stanway Mail Distributing System is designed by Erwin Stanway and Winfred Vivian Maynard, and replaced the courier system that used Horses and wagons to move mail around from city to city.

Implementation.

It was a difficult system to implement, but with some aggressive persuasion, the first two post offices were connected. And the system proofed to be successful. The burn wounds on the hands of the first clerks where discarded and from that moment on the staff was required to bring their own gloves.

Operation

The system consists of every station connected to its neighbouring station with two 1 fist wide pipes. Capsules containing the post are shot through the pipes by putting high pressure steam behind them.
To supply the high pressure steam, every post office is to be equipped with a boiler. Coal and water storage.

This system is much faster than the courier on the horse or the wagon. It only took a while to build all the pipes. Often they were put underground. But where that was not possible, they passed overground too. But overground they are more susceptible to damage. In the end overground turned out to be a lot cheaper to install too, so especially in cities the pipes are connected to the side of buildings passing just over head of the people walking in the streets. One can often hear messages passing, and puffs of steam escaping from small leaks.

Sending

On the sending side. A message is put in a capsule, the address written on a label on the outside. Then the capsule is inserted into the pipe. A hose connected to the main steam line is connected to the end of the pipe, and a valve is opened to allow steam into the pipe behind the capsule. Every pipe requires a different time of steam supplied to it, depending on the distance. If too much steam is applied, the capsule can arrive in the receiving station with too much speed, and escape the arrival slot, and go rogue through the arrival room.

Recieving

On the receiving side, a clamp, called receiving station, is placed over the pipe end, where the capsule slots into. The left over steam from propelling the capsule is discharged into the arrival room. Clerks working in the arrival room generally wear gloves to handle the capsules, as they've become extremely hot from the steam pushing them on. They read the address on the capsule and either pass it on to the next station or remove the message from the capsule to be sent out for delivery. The capsule is then re-used for outgoing mail again.

Distributing capsules

Each pipe has a mechanical counter that counts how many capsules have passed, outgoing and receiving. Every Sunday at sunset, these numbers are checked, if a station has received more capsules then send they will distribute the surplus evenly over the station's it is connected to and send them off. To make sure no station is left without capsules.

If there is alot of post to be send, one might load multiple capsules into a pipe before pushing it trought, but this results in a higher pressure in the pipe behind the capsules. And is therefore not adviced.

Big stations

Big sorting stations may have double or even triple pipes leading to and from other big stations to handle the quantity of the messages. Eglen's first post office no. 2 is the post office with the most connections, it's connected to 17 sub offices within Ivoryhall alone. And another 42 to other cities and locations.

Non-post offices

Several military bases, are connected to the Maynard-Stanway Mail Distributing System, for sending and recieving their own mail. But also the Palace in Ivoryhall has it's own connection.

Accidents

Occasionally it happens that a pipe bursts, expelling extremly hot high pressure steam out into the open. This might be deadly to anyone happening to be standing close to such a pipe at that moment. But this is not as much as a problem as the fact that this hinders the passing of capsules!