Postal Services and Transport

The Club was delighted to welcome Belfast West Club President Karen McShane to speak to the zoom meeting Monday 09 November. A keen local historian and philatelist, she enjoys the study of postage stamps and postal history and is a civil engineer involved mostly in transportation projects. Her detailed talk on the history of routes for communication and how it has defined the modern road was well illustrated, highly interesting and informative and extremely well received.

She revealed changes over the centuries have seen a large shift from pedestrian walkways, to horse drawn coaches; the introduction of toll roads paying for travel but paying for the movement of mail led to improved facilities and the introduction of the rail network. She concluded it was the need for better and faster communications which has driven the increased speed of delivery systems and improvements in infrastructure.