THE news that mail could be put back on the rails has been welcomed by a leading York railway enthusiast.

GB Railfreight (GBRf), a subsidiary of transport operator FirstGroup, is in talks with Royal Mail chiefs about a deal which could see trains moving post again.

A GBRf spokesman confirmed that the operator was in discussions with the Royal Mail, but declined to give further details.

According to the magazine Rail, a new mail-on-rail service could be in operation between London and the north-east, the north-west and Scotland by the end of May.

The Royal Mail announced in June last year that it was disbanding the Travelling Post Office (TPO) service, saying the move would save nearly £30 million a year. The state-owned service said it had failed to reach a financially viable agreement with operator English Welsh and Scottish Railway to carry on the service.

Now mail is almost entirely transported by air and road. Postal chiefs denied claims that the move would damage the environment, saying more effective use of vehicles would mean a drop in carbon monoxide emissions. Nearly 170 years of history came to an end when the last TPO travelled through York earlier this year.

Railway enthusiasts were at York station to wave goodbye to the service, immortalised in WH Auden's Night Mail.

They included John Rathmell, curator of the city's Clearstory railway museum, who today gave a cautious welcome to the news that mail could be returning to the railways.

He said: "I did hear a whisper about this a while ago.

"It will be good if it's half as good as it was before.

"The postal service has become diabolical - the trains used to take the strain."

A Royal Mail spokeswoman confirmed that talks had taken place with rail freight operators, including GBRf, since autumn last year.

She said: "We made it clear that this (disbanding the mail on rail service) was not a policy decision, but a commercial one.

"We would look carefully at any commercially viable solutions that would allow us to continue to use rail in the future."

But she added that there would be no prospect of the TPOs returning to the railways, saying: "What we are talking about is simply transporting mail by train."

Updated: 10:35 Wednesday, April 14, 2004