Well RoadRailers are not going completely away. The USPS owns some RoadRailers which will be retained, I believe these are the ones painted in Phase IV. The cars say "US MAIL CONTRACTOR" on them. As for the 1700 series they were originally designed for Mail Service only. Due to the shortage of Baggage cars some have trickled into Baggage service, which is not a good thing. We are hoping down here that Amtrak will pool about 20 of the 1700's for mail service, and then an additional 20 1000 series, 1100 series, and 1200 series or so for Baggage service. The main advantage to the 1000-1200's are that the space between the doors allows a staging area where you can put bags getting off at the next stop, and a place to load those oncoming and then sort from there once you're out of the station. While the idea of adding shelves for baggage and then keeping the mail on the other side is a good one it presents two problems, first some bags are too heavy/bulky to get up onto shelves. Second many times the mail can take up an entire car. Usually a train will carry 40-50 bogies of mail, with 10-20 getting off at different stops. This is especially maginified on the Saturday 97 when 2 MHC's are required to unload the post office of all its mail.