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six wheel milk tankers


Marmight
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I'm out so can't look in detail, but there are threads on here. From memory, prior to WW2 prob not. After 1942 I believe the milk tankers were pooled, so any tanker could occur anywhere. Soon after they all got amalgamated into the MMB and carried the plain livery. As I said, do check the other threads which have more detail.

Ian

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5 hours ago, ikcdab said:

Soon after they all got amalgamated into the MMB and carried the plain livery


There are other long threads, but a brief correction: the wagons* did not get amalgamated into MMB. After de-pooling (date uncertain but probably c1946) the wagons* returned To their owners.
 

Some were repainted into nice coloured liveries (IMS sky blue as an instance) but most were plain silver with an ownership plate. MMB was responsible for managing milk flows, but the dairies and most of the wagons* remained privately owned. MMB did own a few wagons*, and latterly, when most had pulled-out of rail traffic, they created their own Refurbished rakes, I think because nobody else would bear the cost.

 

IMS pre and post WW2 liveries, some lasted in blue until the 1970s. These are tinplate models, so not super-accurate, but the liveries are kosher.

 

*Edit: that should probably strictly be "tanks", because SFAI the chassis were railway company owned, initially Big Four, then BR.

 

 

 

 

130C9BBF-FB50-4695-8FA8-8FB870F8F4BD.jpeg

Edited by Nearholmer
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13 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

I don't think they were, but there is an RMWeb member who will know for certain one way or the other, and I'm sure will tell us if he happens upon this thread.

According to a former colleague, who had been Assistant Milk Train Controller at Paddington at end of the services, they saw use a handful of times. I believe they'd been intended for inter-creamery transfers to keep things like cheese and dried milk production running, rather for domestic milk traffic. In any event, on their last run, they were sent eastwards, only to be sent back without unloading. They were quietly abandoned at Swindon, possibly still loaded. I pity the poor soul who had to open one to find out...

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11 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

According to a former colleague, who had been Assistant Milk Train Controller at Paddington at end of the services, they saw use a handful of times. I believe they'd been intended for inter-creamery transfers to keep things like cheese and dried milk production running, rather for domestic milk traffic. In any event, on their last run, they were sent eastwards, only to be sent back without unloading. They were quietly abandoned at Swindon, possibly still loaded. I pity the poor soul who had to open one to find out...

Brian,

I'm pretty sure they were empty and they stood at Swindon for a long while (i.e. several years) but they appeared long after the Milk Train Controllers jobs had vanished.  They did however have, new tanks which were smaller than the original pattern - probably an idea to improcve their stability and lower the centre of gravity smaller as well as reducing the amount of product.  

 

The 'normal' six wheel tanks were notorious for buffing shocks due to the milk sloshing to & fro if a train had to brake heavily for any reason.  I had a footplate ride on a D8XX on a milk train between Reading and Kensington one night in the latter half of the 1960s and a signal went back to danger in front of us at Acton so some very heavy braking ensued, the milk tankers were still plucking and pushing the loco a bit as we crossed to the Victoria Branch at Old Oak Common despite covering the mile or so at fairly low speed.

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Even prior to WW2, it was not uncommon to see milk tanks from one diary at another's facilities. The Milk Marketing Board was established in 1933 and from an early stage, it took a hand in ensuring that milk was not wasted by routing excess milk to facilities that had capacity to process it into longer-lived commodities.

 

Here is a shot of of the Cow and Gate plant at Johnstown near Carmarthen in the late 30s. If you look closely, you can see an Express Dairies tank in residence indicating that inter-dairy traffic was already occurring at this date.

 

Carmarthern.jpg.83ccbda967a80e6b739957881bda2fe4.jpg

 

One complication to this was that United Dairies and Express Dairies had installed incompatible connecting equipment on their milk tanks which led to a sort of VHS/Betamax situation where certain tankers could only use certain creameries.

Edited by Karhedron
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On 03/10/2020 at 21:37, Nearholmer said:

I don't think they were, but there is an RMWeb member who will know for certain one way or the other, and I'm sure will tell us if he happens upon this thread.

 

I can't think who you might be referring to. :jester:

 

The MMB refurbished milk tanks were only used briefly in 1981 to transport excess cream from Chard to Stowmarket for processing. Sadly the flow was badly organised by both the MMB and BR. The Chard shunter was notoriously unreliable meaning the tankers were often late being marshalled. BR staff had to drive down from Westbury shed to man the loco. It took lorry turns away from Chard which upset the local drivers. Lastly, there were no washout facilities at Stowmarket. This meant the used tankers were returned to Chard with the residual milk having congealed into a nasty sticky mess at the bottom of the tanks. Some poor soul was then tasked with climbing in to clean out the tanks with a brush and hose.

 

The flow ended after about 6 weeks of operation but photos of it in action survive.

 

http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/uploads/7/6/8/3/7683812/1183751_1_orig.jpg

 

1123 hard at work on the climb past Ammerham between Chard Jnc and Crewkerne 23rd August 1981 

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Many of the colourful liveries of milk tankers were pre-war colour schemes. After pooling in 1942, tankers slowly started to be turned out in plain silver livery with owning dairy denoted by a small owners plate. This usually weathered to a pretty dull colour in service as the tanks were not cleaned often. The image below shows the "classic" look for BR-era tankers.

 

mark_yarwood_hemyock_01_xlarge.jpg

 

However this is not the whole story. New milk tankers continued to be built into the early 50s and these were still painted in the owning dairy liveries, even as older tanks were getting painted plain silver. The dark blue Express Dairy livery with white lettering continued to be applied in the 50s and could be seen into the mid 60s. Other later-period liveries include a light blue livery adopted by MMB, the orange and white "St Ivel" livery and a deep orangey-red which I think might have been a Unigate livery but I have not managed to positively identify.

 

Photos from the 70s show the majority of tanks were dull silver but more colourful tanks could be spotted, mixed in among them.

 

western milk FEB_74.JPG

 

 

western milk 20_7_75.JPG

 

Edited by Karhedron
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It won't be much help to the late group/early BR contingents, but IMS was taken over by Express Dairy (IIRC) around 1960, and it's likely the tanks got mixed thereafter until they got repainted (assuming they all did).

 

I'm intending to infiltrate the odd IMS-blue liveried wagon into my gradually increasing Express Dairy fleet.

 

Incidentally, Lima did a black IMS tank. Was that authentic or just Lima being Lima? (I have one of those, too)

 

John

 

 

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Yes. The late 50s and early 60s saw a spate of mergers and takeovers. Express took over HE&S just after nationalisation and IMS a few years later. In 1959, United Dairies merged with Cow and Gate (including its subsidiary, Dried Milk Products) to create Unigate. In 1960, Unigate took over Aplin and Barrett and acquired their “St Ivel” brand. Ambrosia ceased dispatching milk by rail at the end of 1962. By the end of 1963, just Unigate, MMB and Express Dairies would still be dispatching milk by rail. This was down from nearly a dozen at nationalsation. 

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1 hour ago, Dunsignalling said:

Incidentally, Lima did a black IMS tank. Was that authentic or just Lima being Lima? (I have one of those, too)

 

I haven't seen a black IMS livery. Pre-war was red and post-war was blue. I suspect it was just Lima being Lima. ;)

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3 hours ago, Paddy said:

........  I wonder if there were any ASDA milk tanks? ;) .........

 

According to the ever-reliable Wikipedia "The company was founded in 1949 when the Asquith family merged their retail business with the Associated Dairies company of Yorkshire." - so ASDA - as such - couldn't have operated milk tanks until BR days and the Yorkshire company was probably too small & localised to have had a need.

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3 hours ago, Paddy said:

Thanks @Aire Head - thought so.  I wonder if there were any ASDA milk tanks? ;)

 

Afraid not. Would have been interesting though. Mid-green with white lettering. I imagine they would have ended up looking khaki coloured very quickly once in service. ;)

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Great thread and replies. Thank you all. The creamery at Yollock Harbour is under construction now to house the two 6 wheel tankers that have arrived...along with some nasty weathering...

The base of the concrete enclosed trackwork is currently being laid.

 

 

AD525513-9A5A-42FC-ABC1-67876C006994.jpeg

4955F6AB-F3A7-4A4E-A801-83AEBEA2B470.jpeg

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7 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

 

Afraid not. Would have been interesting though. Mid-green with white lettering. I imagine they would have ended up looking khaki coloured very quickly once in service. ;)

A bit like my CWS tanker in the picture above...the weathering is not finished yet...

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