Milk Tanker Liveries 1948-67

[Right Away]

Could anyone shed a light on the liveries that were carried by 4 and 6 wheel milk tankers during the years of BR steam, particularly in the South of England (WR & SR lines).

 

The photos I have seen are of generally very dirty examples with no identification visible.

Thank you in anticipation.

[asmay2002]

https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/?q=milk

[chris45lsw]

Could anyone shed a light on the liveries that were carried by 4 and 6 wheel milk tankers during the years of BR steam, particularly in the South of England (WR & SR lines).

 

The photos I have seen are of generally very dirty examples with no identification visible.

Thank you in anticipation.

Filthy white or silver seems to be the most common livery in BR days!  With the dairy name on an oblong plate. 

 

Incidentally there were no 4 wheel tanks in BR days.  Pre War 4 wheelers were converted to 6 wheels apparently because the rougher ride of a 4 wheeler tended to churn the milk into cream/butter!

 

 

Chris KT

[dibber25]

I never saw a clean one! They were occasionally dirty, usually filthy, and the nameplates (if they had them at all) were illegible. (CJL)

[jjnewitt]

As others have said they were pretty filthy most of the time. I have seen photos of ex-works examples in rakes and they stick out like a sore thumb. Not all had dairy plates but whilst not really cleaned they do seem to have been legible more often than not. Under the crud most would have been silver (or should that be aluminium as this seems to have been what they were clad in?). Occasional wagons would have Express Dairies or M.M.B blue tanks underneath the weathering. The white and orange of St Ivel came post steam. 

 

Justin

[Karhedron]

The colourful liveries often seen on RTR models are commonly (but not always) pre-war liveries. Milk tankers were pooled by the MMB in 1942 and it was around this time that the various pre-war liveries started to be replaced with the dull silver finish. However milk tanks were pretty low priority items for both cleaning and repainting and the odd coloured tanker could often be spotted in rakes long after nationalisation.

 

This is just a generalisation as there were some coloured liveries applied after nationalisation. One particular one was a reddish-orange Unigate livery which I have not managed to date but could be spotted in West-country rakes well into the diesel era. Some tankers were also painted in MMB blue.

 

 

 

There is a clip of steam trains on the GWR in 1947 and the final shot is of a milk train. This shows that even around nationalisation, most milk tanks seem to have already taken on the familiar shade of uniform dirt that most would wear for the next 30 years.

 

 

In summary, dirty silver is a safe bet for any post-war milk tankers but feel free to dot in occasional splash of colour. One thing that I have not seen are rakes of tankers in matching liveries. These seem to have been a pre-war feature and vanished with the 1942 pooling.

[Pteremy]

There is a nice colour photo of two (and a bit) milk tanks at West Ealing in 1961 on p478 of GWJ no 88. In 'filthy' livery (although the 'bit' is cleaner).

[jjnewitt]

In summary, dirty silver is a safe bet for any post-war milk tankers but feel free to dot in occasional splash of colour. One thing that I have not seen are rakes of tankers in matching liveries. These seem to have been a pre-war feature and vanished with the 1942 pooling.

 

I'm interested in exactly what you mean by the term 'pooled' and how did it effectvely work?

 

Justin

[Karhedron]

I'm interested in exactly what you mean by the term 'pooled' and how did it effectvely work?

That is a good question and the short answer is that I am not completely sure. I have seen the comment on pooling made in multiple places so I assume it is legitimate.

 

Having qualified my ignorance, I will now happily proceed onto conjecture. In the 1930s, milk tanks were ordered by the dairies and owned by the them (although the underframes were owned by the railway companies). This led to scenes like those below where neat rakes of matching tankers were dispatched to the corresponding bottling plants in the big cities.

 

 

During the war all sorts of expediencies were necessary and the railways were all but nationalised. My guess is that pooling tankers made them more efficient. Rather than having a set of United Dairies tankers waiting to be filled from a United Dairies creamery, my guess is that it was more efficient to pool all the tankers, dispatch them to wherever they were needed and then collect them en-masse. Thus the dedicated milk trains of the pre-war years with matching tankers gave way to the post-war milk trains picking up from several dairies en-route to London with their mishmash of tank designs and liveries.

 

If anyone can give a more definitive description of events, I would be interested to learn the full details.

[jjnewitt]

If anyone can give a more definitive description of events, I would be interested to learn the full details.

 

As would I. 

 

I asked because I'm yet to be convinced that the milk tanks were all put in one pool and vehicles sent randomly to creameries for filling. I occasionally get asked by customers to identify milk tanks in a particular service that they want to model. I've got reasonably good at identifying diagrams and a lot obviously corresponded to a particular dairy company, a situation that continued post 1942 when further milk tanks were built. What I tend to see is that milk tanks operating to a particular creamery generally had tanks owned by the dairy that ran it. If they were pooled I would expect to see more of a mix and whilst there isn't a huge amount of decent photographic eveidence to go by the instances I've looked at are too frequent to be just chance.

 

From what I gather in 1942 the Milk Marketing Board were handed the responsbility of controlling the distribution of milk to ensure supplies got to where they were needed. Entirely sensible in war time (and post war) conditions It would be interesting to know exacty how this relationship worked with the diariy companies (including the M.M.B itself with its creamery hat on). If the milk tanks were pooled as you say it would also be interesting to know what the dairy companies got out of it as they certainly would have contributed to that pool by paying for more tanks (that they still owned) to go on underframes post 1942. Personally I suspect there was something a bit more complicated going on as there were a lot of different 'interests' in the movement of milk by rail.

 

It would be nice if someone who was there could answer some of these questions and explain it properly but I imagine that is now a dwindling bunch and the only comments I've seen are along the lines of 'everyone's got it wrong' but giving no explaination as to what is right, which is as much use as a chocolate teapot...

 

Justin

[Karhedron]

On the SR, mixing seemed to be the order of the day. This view of Torrington shows the source of the Express Dairies flow on the Southern so if anywhere would have a consistent batch of milk tankers post-nationalisation, this would be a good place to look.

 

 

In fact there look to be 2 or possibly even 3 different diagrams in that rake.

 

Similarly the Unigate dock at West ealing seems to hold a variety of diagrams.

 

[Nearholmer]

If you want to know for sure, join the Classic 0 Gauge forum (RMWeb for tinplaters!) and ask frequent contributor Bruce Palmer. Before retirement ( a good few years back) he was MMB’s man in charge of logistics and knows the detail of all this stuff.

Edited October 2, 2018 by Nearholmer

[jonhall]

The MMB was formed in 1933, and whilst I don't know what its early powers were, late in life it used to have the power to buy every pint of milk in England and Wales, and then to choose who it sold it to, with the aims of 1) always having liquid milk available to housholds, and 2) making sure excess got turned into cheese or butter which could be stored, with no milk going to waste. EVEN if you owned both the cow and the dairy, you still had to sell the milk to the MMB and then buy it back...

 

You can imagine how important that role was during the war (and much of the MMB structure was clearly designed to put Britains food production on a war footing) so pooling of wagons would make sense to me. Alas by the time I joined the MMB chemistry lab as a school leaver, the railway tanks had gone, and I was more interested in the Sports and Social Club Bar, but its a lasting regret that I didn't womble over to the MMB library who probably had a heap of interesting documents on the subject.

 

Jon

[Wickham Green]

The MMB was formed in 1933, and whilst I don't know what its early powers were, late in life it used to have the power to buy every pint of milk in England and Wales, and then to choose who it sold it to, with the aims of 1) always having liquid milk available to housholds, and 2) making sure excess got turned into cheese or butter which could be stored, with no milk going to waste. EVEN if you owned both the cow and the dairy, you still had to sell the milk to the MMB and then buy it back...

 

You can imagine how important that role was during the war (and much of the MMB structure was clearly designed to put Britains food production on a war footing) so pooling of wagons would make sense to me. Alas by the time I joined the MMB chemistry lab as a school leaver, the railway tanks had gone, and I was more interested in the Sports and Social Club Bar, but its a lasting regret that I didn't womble over to the MMB library who probably had a heap of interesting documents on the subject.

 

Jon

Presumably that was the Sports and Social Club Milk Bar ........

 

For what it's worth, my late father was also at the MMB for a while and reckoned he'd had details of every cow in the UK on his desk - long before the days of computerisation, of course ................... needless to say I never asked whether he'd had any info on tank wagons !   

[br2975]

I never saw a clean one! They were occasionally dirty, usually filthy, and the nameplates (if they had them at all) were illegible. (CJL)

 

What Chris said !

[jjnewitt]

On the SR, mixing seemed to be the order of the day. This view of Torrington shows the source of the Express Dairies flow on the Southern so if anywhere would have a consistent batch of milk tankers post-nationalisation, this would be a good place to look.

 

In fact there look to be 2 or possibly even 3 different diagrams in that rake.

 

Different diagrams yes but not necessarliy different dairy companies. Almost all the dairies operating milk tanks had multiple diagrams. Interestingly most of those in this picture are Unigate types.

I can't make them all out but from right to left: (probably) GWR O.52 (Ex Cow & Gate with Unigate plate), GWR O.57 or O.60 (Unigate), LMS d.1994 (could be any number of diaries but looks like a United Dairies plate), LMS d.1994 (probably with what looks like a United Dairies or Unigate plate), I don't know what the fith one is but the plate looks to be United Dairies or Unigate. The example in the goods shed doesn't look to be Express Dairy either as there is no number plate on the crosshead (baulk at the end of the tank).

 

Similarly the Unigate dock at West ealing seems to hold a variety of diagrams.

Most, if not all, United Dairies/Unigate types.

Again from right to left: LMS d.1994 (United Diaries or Unigate plate), SR d.3157 fitted with a sloping tank (United Dairies), another LMS d.1994 (could be a number of dairies), another sloping tank, centre platform example probably SR d.3155 as there are no diagonal stanchions on the ends (United Dairies), GWR Possibly O.55 (could be ex. Cow & Gate, ex Aplin & Barrett or M.M.B), another centre platform example could be GWR or SR but will have been United Diaries.

 

It's not always easy to tell diagrams (and which company owned the tank) apart but generally those with small dairy plates were United Dairies/Unigate, Express Dairies plates were much bigger and had the number plate on the crosshead. Full platforms were United Diaries, mesh walkways were mostly Express Dairies.

 

If you want to know for sure, join the Classic 0 Gauge forum (RMWeb for tinplaters!) and ask frequent contributor Bruce Palmer. Before retirement ( a good few years back) he was MMB’s man in charge of logistics and knows the detail of all this stuff.

 

Thanks, that's brilliant. Do you want to try and get in touch with him Karhedron or should I? Don't want to both pester him at the same time.

 

The MMB was formed in 1933, and whilst I don't know what its early powers were, late in life it used to have the power to buy every pint of milk in England and Wales, and then to choose who it sold it to, with the aims of 1) always having liquid milk available to housholds, and 2) making sure excess got turned into cheese or butter which could be stored, with no milk going to waste. EVEN if you owned both the cow and the dairy, you still had to sell the milk to the MMB and then buy it back...

 

You can imagine how important that role was during the war (and much of the MMB structure was clearly designed to put Britains food production on a war footing) so pooling of wagons would make sense to me. Alas by the time I joined the MMB chemistry lab as a school leaver, the railway tanks had gone, and I was more interested in the Sports and Social Club Bar, but its a lasting regret that I didn't womble over to the MMB library who probably had a heap of interesting documents on the subject.

 

The M.M.B. was set up with the intention of making sure that farmers got a minimum price for their milk. Prior to that they were at the mercy of the big diairies to a certain extent. In some ways it's a shame we don't still have the diary industry working in this way with the huge supermarkets around...

 

Certainly what happened during WW2 was that the restriction of underframe to the railway company that built it disapeared so they became 'common user' in that sense. They may well have been pooled, and it would probably make sense practically to do so, but looking at photos I don't see what I would expect from that situation, i.e. a random selection of wagons and it leads to more questions than answers.

 

Justin

[Karhedron]

Thanks, that's brilliant. Do you want to try and get in touch with him Karhedron or should I? Don't want to both pester him at the same time.

I will have a go if you like. Nothing to say you cannot get in touch separately at a later date.

[jjnewitt]

I will have a go if you like. Nothing to say you cannot get in touch separately at a later date.

That's fine by me. I'll look forward to hearing the results of your enquiries. 

 

If he says the wagon were pooled ask him how that worked in practise and what the dairy companies got out of the arrangement. They still owned the tanks and had more milk tanks built post 1942 so they must have benifited from any arrangement with the M.M.B.

 

Cheers,

Justin