Express Dairy Exhibition Layout

[GraemeWatson]

Here is a quick photo to show my inspiration, the Chard dairy shunter from the era of the Milk Marketing Board, and an attempt at replicating the photo with my mashup Bagnall/Class 06 shunter.

I have made a few modifications, most of which were described in the post above.

Note: my yellow shunter is not fully finished nor necessarily representative of this exact same engine, and is merely inspired by it.

 

http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/uploads/7/6/8/3/7683812/2319188_1_orig.jpg

 

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by GraemeWatson

[GraemeWatson]

Here's a better look at my current fleet of re-sprayed/worked on/mashup industrial diesels.

 

"Blue" is in traditional Express Dairy colours.

"Orange" is in Wilts United Diaries colours.

"Yellow" is generic, but inspired by the shunter at Chard.

 

 

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by GraemeWatson

[leopardml2341]

Here is a quick photo to show my inspiration, the Chard dairy shunter from the era of the Milk Marketing Board, and an attempt at replicating the photo with my mashup Bagnall/Class 06 shunter.I have made a few modifications, most of which were described in the post above.Note: my yellow shunter is not fully finished nor necessarily representative of this exact same engine, and is merely inspired by it.IMG_0042b 25.jpg

 

You could have posed the '47' the right way round !

[GraemeWatson]

Indeed, I'll set up my SLR for a proper shot rather than this one which I did in LED light, and then this monster will be gone forever...

EDIT 11/09/2018: Original point and click photo above has been replaced for a better quality SLR photo to show Class 47 around the correct way!

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by GraemeWatson

[cromptonnut]

This is a standard Ruston & Hornsby 165DE - I this Judith Edge makes a kit of this.  However your suggestion will produce something "close enough" as the variability in industrial types is much greater than in main line designs.

 

Yes they do, I have an O gauge one for my "when I get round to it" Chard Junction based project. I grew up about a mile from there and visited the adjacent pub nearby with my family as a child.  We knew a lot of people who worked at the factory, one of them being Frank Long who was one of the qualified drivers and I had several cab rides up and down the yard in it. Frank had his five minutes of fame a few years ago when he was on "Deal or No Deal" and became a bit of a legend.

 

After leaving Chard Junction, the shunter went to the Cholsey & Wallingford Railway for a while, and it now lives on the Mid Suffolk Light Railway.  The 165 replaced a Ruston 48, and I don't know where that went.  The milk tanks of the 80's were coded TMV.  I believe they arrived, sat in the yard for several years, then got towed off for scrap.

 

The factory now no longer exists, it has been demolished and the land essentially useless due to it being on the flood plain of the River Axe adjacent to it.

[Karhedron]

The milk tanks of the 80's were coded TMV.  I believe they arrived, sat in the yard for several years, then got towed off for scrap.

Yes, such a waste. I believe they were used in anger on the Great Eastern for a short while.

 

The flow using the refurbished MMB tanks was from Chard to Stowmarket and a summary was written by Brian Pibworth for the Cornwall Railway Society.

 

​In the course of catching up with "Cornwall Railways" postings,  my eye was caught by Dave Tozer's  reply re. refurbished milk tankers.

 

"I can only recall seeing them once heading to Chard Junction. I suspect they were never used much".

 

It rather depends on what you call "much",  as during the summer of 1981 Chard Junction Creamery was host to freight movements unseen for several years, as two rakes of milk tanks, refurbished through some sort of EEC funding, carried surplus milk from the Milk Marketing Board creamery, to a similar plant at Stowmarket in Suffolk.

 

Unfortunately, while providing a spectacle for us local rail enthusiasts, the project suffered from the "dead hand" of BR and local self interest and didn't last long.

 

I may be a bit thin on remembering detail but as I recall, the working depended on an inspector, signaller, pilotman and shunter being driven in a Transit van the 60 miles from Westbury Shed to enable the mainline loco to access the milk siding and extract/return the tanks.  This cavalcade was often late and  the MMB shunter, restricted to their private siding and headshunt,  was sometimes reluctant to start .  Delay was the order of the day and there was still considerable local resentment of BR (W) taking over "our" freight as they scaled down the old Southern route in favour of "their" GWR main line to Exeter.

 

Having unlocked gates and points and shuffled the rolling stock,  the train would eventually be dispatched eastwards, to the relief of Chard Junction Signal Box, who viewed the whole exercise with great scepticism.  The full trains took the Southern route to Yeovil Jnc then via Castle Cary to Stowmarket, but returned the empties via Exeter.

 

The last nail in the coffin resulted from the lack of washout facilities at Stowmarket which meant that the empties spent many hours sitting in the summer sun with the residual milk contents rapidly "going off".  On return to Chard, one of  the milk dock reception gang was detailed to climb into the tank and clean out the curdled mess with just a brush and hosepipe.  For this privilege he was awarded 50p per tank and there was significant resistance to taking on the task, not only from the workers but also from wives burdened with additional laundry.  Added to this, the job theoretically took road driving turns away from the Chard plant, so the project was doomed even before the EEC funding ran out and after a few fits and starts eventually ceased later that year.

[leopardml2341]

Hardly surprising that they weren't used much, given that in the eighties the 'V' in 'TMV' was well and truly on the way out.

 

As an aside, why did they have 3 axles?

Edited September 11, 2018 by leopardml2341

[cromptonnut]

As an aside, why did they have 3 axles?

 

I believe it was new tank bodies on refurbished old chassis - probably hence retaining the vacuum braking.

 

There were both 4 and 6 wheel TMV's - https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/mmbmilk

[GraemeWatson]

Thank you for your posts cromptonnut, Karhedron and leopardml2341; some excellent information and photos.

 

Paul Bartlett's site continues to be an excellent source of prototype photos and modelling inspiration; the existence of two-axle TMVs had escaped my attention.

Hornby made a TTA version of this many years ago from 1983 to 1985, although it had a really nice chromed livery application.

Edited December 17, 2022 by GraemeWatson

[cromptonnut]

Thank you for your posts cromptonnut, Karhedron and leopardml2341; some excellent information and photos.

 

Paul Bartlett's site continues to be an excellent source of prototype photos and modelling inspiration; the existence of two-axle TMVs had escaped my attention.

Hornby made a TTA version of this many years ago from 1983 to 1985, although it had a really nice chromed livery application.

 

I have just one of those The TMV tank is crying out for someone with a 3D printer to do a barrel, must be a pretty easy shape to do.

[Enterprisingwestern]

Unfortunately, I was somewhat crippled by dissatisfaction because I just didn't think what I had done was "good enough".

 

If you have some spare time, you can do some buildings for my layout and "cripple me with dissatisfaction"!

Cracking little layout.

 

Mike.

[GraemeWatson]

If you have some spare time, you can do some buildings for my layout and "cripple me with dissatisfaction"!

Cracking little layout.

 

Mike.

Thanks, I'm very grateful for the kind words. The layout spent a lot of time in bits, long after the initial white foam board photos from my early posts in 2016.

I just kept looking at it all piled up and losing my way with progress during the ballasting and scenic process, which had a few false starts and took a while to get it to look like how I wanted, all the while looking at "perfect" photos in magazines.

I conducted a site visit to Appleby to see what was left of the old Express Dairy facility there, picked up my interest but other things required my attention.

I had helped operate two of JaymzHatstand's layouts at exhibitions (Scrayingham OO9 and Whitborough Quayside OO) with some guest kitbuilt stock and that helped me get back on track as it were; I'm grateful for that.

I'm equally grateful and excited by the reception so far on RMWeb and for the interesting topics of discussion being generated.

[GraemeWatson]

Dapol Class 22 at the dairy, pending departure.

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by GraemeWatson

[GraemeWatson]

A photograph of the recently installed dairy gates...

 

[GraemeWatson]

True to my original intention for this layout, one that it could be used across geographic areas and eras, here are a traction trio of photos.

[danstercivicman]

Any progress?  

[GraemeWatson]

On 03/03/2019 at 21:55, danstercivicman said:

Any progress?  

 

Yes, happy to report a recent development in that I have constructed a Chivers Finelines (now trading as Slimrails) LNER Pigeon Brake Van.

Usefully, this can be used as a milk brake, which is the intention here.

Though not yet numbered, I had a go with the Mike Trice LNER teak method published within RMWeb and I'm quite happy with this result.

 

My next update will show an in-progress domestic extension to the layout for home use.

[GraemeWatson]

In order to leave the Dairy part of the layout, I added an extension to allow traffic to flow onto the continuous run, featuring Durham railway viaduct.

Here, an LNER J15 is taking a United Dairies milk train over the East Coast mainline, mainline braking is provided by the short LNER full brake. The overall scene has some additional refinements to make, but it's enough to show the idea.

Edited July 23, 2019 by GraemeWatson

[danstercivicman]

Very nice  

 

An impressive scene! 

[D3489gibson]

Just found this thread through a quick Google search for OO gauge dairy kits... Absolutely astounding work fella! 

 

Nathan

[GraemeWatson]

On 20/08/2019 at 13:30, D3489gibson said:

Just found this thread through a quick Google search for OO gauge dairy kits... Absolutely astounding work fella! 

 

Nathan

 

Many thanks!

Edited December 17, 2022 by GraemeWatson

[MacDuff999]

Like D3489, just found this thread - albeit 18 months later. I have been researching and putting together the basics of a similar layout, over the last year or so. In answer to Leopard's question of September, 2018, 3-axle milk tanks were developed because, needing to travel at XP speeds, the 2-axle tanks became unstable. The extra axle largely eliminated that problem. My layout (Merchiston Dairy) is on a fairly new thread I started last month, and represents an actual rail-connected dairy bottling plant on the west side of Edinburgh, less than half a mile from the steam loco shed at Dalry Road (64C). The time frame is c. 1955-60. It is in its very early stages, and the first post on the thread just 'sets the scene' so to speak. I need to find out how to attach photos, so I can put one or two images there as well, to make the thread a bit more interesting. Nice work there though Graeme; like the buildings. Any further developments since 2019? My bottling plant is a mock-up, assembled from an old Bilteezi thin card kit of a small factory, laminated on to picture mounting card, but the plan is to make a much better one from Plastikard. I chose that, because the structure depicted bears a resemblance to the old Rossmore Road bottling plant adjacent to London Marylebone station. 

[MacDuff999]

Sorry, meant to say, Steve Banks has on his website, a section dealing with milk trains, containing some very useful information - as well as a few interesting photos of same. 

 

Ian. 

[GraemeWatson]

[GraemeWatson]

When this thread first started the idea that an RTR Ruston 48DS in this livery could hardly be imagined, and yet here we are.

Looks great idling away the hours round the dairy.