Abstract: The article is devoted to the reconstruction of the historical experience of police protection of postal institutions by the ranks of gendarmerie police departments of railways in the Russian Empire. The purpose of this article is to study the main measures that were implemented by the gendarmerie police to ensure the safety of postal transportation by rail, as well as the disclosure of the tactics of intruders who committed daring robberies on mail trains. The object of the study is the historical experience of the official activities of the gendarmerie railway police of the Russian Empire. The subject is the police protection of the activities of the post office within the railways by gendarmes. Following the fundamental principles of historicism, comprehensiveness and objectivity formed the methodological basis of the study. During the research, the author relied on the apparatus of general scientific methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, concretization. The use of special historical research methods made it possible to reveal the content of the process of police protection of postal items from criminal encroachments within the domestic railways: from the standpoint of the historical-systematic method, the gendarmerie service is understood as an integral complex of interrelated measures; the historical-genetic method made it possible to form a detailed description of the main features of the railway gendarmes service in terms of the protection of postal goods.