Bill, I don't believe one R.R. could carry you from the east cost to the west cost during WWI. The REA was created to insure that one organization was responsible for shipment of packages throughout there entire journey. During Parker Bros. production it may have required 4 different railroads to deliver a package from Meriden to San Francisco.

FWIW By the early 1900s this line was included in Remington Arms Co. catalogs --

Attachment 77344

They shipped packages across country from 1869 on, by rail. However, it required several carriers to ship parcels across country and ecah had its own system and priorities which can cause mistakes. The REA was established to insure deliveries. They had there own green boxcars with a red plaque on both sides and only REA personnel handled the packages. It must have worked it got us through WWI & II.

Parker shipping Box
 

I posted in "Hammer Guns", a picture of the box that came with a gun I purchased 25 years ago, from an estate. I believe it is an original Parker shipping box. Check it out ,see what you think, Jim.

That box is far too well finished and constructed to be a shipping container.

Now it appears you can't ship anything less than a car load by rail. AMTRACK doesn't allow you to take anything but your luggage as carry on or checked baggage and prohibits sending a long list of items in your luggage. The wife and I are looking at taking AMTRACK to San Diego to visit our son and his family. I wanted to take a special tool to him but that's not allowed even as checked baggage. I suppose that the railroads don't want to lose shipping to AMTRACK.

Dennis, you have rather high expectations for a service created by the bureaucracy, approved of by the politicians, and subsidized by us the taxpayer.

I think the boxes that Dudley mentioned were original Parker boxes. I didn't purchase any of them. I have wood boxes sent out by Parker Brothers into the late era. I have seen Parker boxes made of cardboard but I'm not sure they were used for shipping. My uncle sent my grandfather's Lefever E Grade pigeon gun to me about 1956, via REA, in a wooden box. It was only decades later that I saw an identical box at a Greenwich show, with Lefever labels. Unfortunately, I had trashed the box that my Lefever was shipped in.