GWR milk trains

[Dan Griffin]

Hello, 

 

Milk trains that ran on the GWR, did they run with mixed ownership tanks?

 

would St Ivel tanks be seen in the same train as UD ones etc?

 

thanks

[Paul H Vigor]

47 minutes ago, Dan Griffin said:

Hello, 

 

Milk trains that ran on the GWR, did they run with mixed ownership tanks?

 

would St Ivel tanks be seen in the same train as UD ones etc?

 

thanks

And Siphon vans (for milk churns) and a brake van.

[Oldddudders]

'Karhedron' is RMWeb's milkman. He knows more than most. 

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Dan Griffin said:

would St Ivel tanks be seen in the same train as UD ones 

 

St Ivel as a branding name originated with Aplin and Barrett, but I’m fairly certain that they didn’t apply it to their milk tank wagons, only on advertising and product labelling. I think their tank wagons simply carried their company name.

 

The well-known orange and white St Ivel tank  wagon livery wasn’t introduced until A&B and their branding had been subsumed. I can’t remember off hand if they fell to Cow & Gate or United, but within a couple of years from 1958 they’d all become Unigate anyway. I’ve wasted ages trying to pin down the exact date of the orange and white livery on rail tanks, but got no closer than 1967-68, so it is not a livery that would ever have appeared on the GWR.

 

The plain-ish ‘UD’ livery, beloved of Hornby Dublo and Triang, was a little-used post-WW2 one, I think c1950. Before the war, United used a number of fancier liveries, the best known being white with their rather nice map logo.

 

Karhedron will, as OD says, tell about trains with tankers from more than one dairy at different dates.

Edited October 22, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Not Jeremy]

Indeed he does, I'll chance an answer without him though, the answer is yes as more than one dairy company's output was added to milk train services. 

 

Which ones would have depended on the dairies that were being picked up from en route.

 

During the war the tanks were pooled and it all got more mixed up.

 

Later on is probably even more complicated, I'll leave that to the RMweb milkman, who is a very fine fellow indeed!

[Dan Griffin]

Thanks all. appreciate the help. 

[Hal Nail]

Type "milk trains rmweb" in Google and there are several threads on formations and stock.

[keefer]

One of the latest threads (also has links to another one):

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/153383-milk-tank-liveries/

 

[Karhedron]

21 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

'Karhedron' is RMWeb's milkman. He knows more than most. 

 

DId someone call my name?

 

The simple answer is yes, milk trains did run with tanks from different dairy companies. The longer answer is that it is slightly more complicated and depends on when and where you were looking.

 

The first milk tanks were introduced in 1927 and initially only a few creameries were equipped to handle them. The first two dispatching dairies were Wootton Bassett on the GWR and Calvely on the LMS. Both were owned by United Dairies and dispatched to their bottling plant at Mitre Bridge. Initially these milk tanks ran in dedicated trains because there were not enough dairies dispatching tanks to make up mixed trains. Here are some examples of dedicated milk trains.

 

Caynham Court hauls the United Dairies Wootton Bassett - Mitre Bridge milk train through Sonning Cutting in the 1930s.

 

3442 Bullfinch hauls the Independent Milk Supplies Dorrington - Marylebone trains through Birmingham Snow Hill in 1937.

 

 

It was only later in the 1930s when enough dispatching dairies were equipped to send tanks that mixed milk trains started to develop. One of the early examples was the Whitland to Kensington milk train. In 1938 this would have been a real modeller's delight with a mix of tanks from various dairies, all in colourful pre-nationalisation liveries and accompanied by a couple of Siphons to handle churn traffic. The 1938 WTT details the following makeup of the train.

 

EDIT - I will post a summary of the WTT as soon as I can work out how to post tables. 

[Karhedron]

If at first you don't succeed, cheat and use a screenshot.

 

 

Carmarthen and Whitland were both United Dairies plants. United Dairies had a variety of liveries in the 1930s including the classic white livery and plain silver with UD lettering. Ffairfach was a Co-operative Wholesale Society dairy and their tanks were green with white lettering. There is a good chance some of these tanks would have been the demountable road-rail "Rotanks". By the end of the 1930s, MMB at Pont Llanio had opened and started dispatching milk south which would have joined this train at Carmarthen too. So if you are modelling 1939 it is quite possible you would have seen a train with white United Dairies, green CWS and blue MMB tanks in the rake along with a couple of Siphons and a pair of passenger brake vans.

 

During the war the MMB took charge of milk distribution and pooled milk tanks meaning that mixed rakes became even more common. They were not totally randomised however as United Dairies and Express Dairies had pioneered different and incompatible standards of connectors on their milk tanks. This led to a VHS/Betamax situation and meant that there was still some pattern to which tanks were sent to which dairies.

 

After nationalisation, the MMB began refurbishing milk tanks. The early tanks used cork insulation which had started to perish by this point so it was removed and replaced with glass wool insulation. The tanks were then reclad in plain aluminium. This was the origin of the dull silver appearance of milk tanks which became predominant for most of the rest of their lives. Some dairy companies did apply more colourful liveries after nationalisation such as the orange and white St Ivel livery of Unigate, MMB blue and a plain red/orange livery which may have been unigate (although I am not certain).

[Not Jeremy]

An excellent reply Karhedron, you ought to write a book on the subject, I think it might be quite popular....

 

Simon

[Karhedron]

25 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

An excellent reply Karhedron, you ought to write a book on the subject, I think it might be quite popular....

 

Now there's a great idea.....

[Nearholmer]

Not one that hasn’t been suggested before, though.

 

(Your eager public awaits)

 

 

Edited October 23, 2021 by Nearholmer

[D826]

2 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

Now there's a great idea.....

It is, and I'd buy it Matt.  In the 1970s to 1980 the Up Milk and down empties was my favourite train of the day when we were holidaying in Dawlish or up in North Devon.

 

Among all the other freight and variety back then, it stood out.  The up train always seemed to be working hard, coming out of Kennaway tunnel- and the distinctive sound of the 6w tanks on rail joints sounded fast.

 

Even in 78/9, when my beloved hydraulics had gone the 50s worked hard on them.  Good picture of 50 044, by then named Exeter, working hard on the up milk in John Vaughans book - Power of the 50s - I think at Brent but I don't have it to hand now.  My edition is 1979/80.   

 

I'm a member of the North Devon Railways Facebook Group.  The avatar is a lovely picture at Barnstaple of green 25 on a rake of tanks bound for Torrington, so must be 72/3 or thereabouts.

 

Your knowledge on the topic is well worth a few quid of anyone with an interests' money !

 

Best regards

 

Matt W

[The Stationmaster]

22 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

An excellent reply Karhedron, you ought to write a book on the subject, I think it might be quite popular....

 

Simon

But then he would need to find a publisher ... 

[Fat Controller]

Both Ffairfach and Llangadog used 'Rotanks'; not sure where they were attached/detached, but on the Central Wales, they ran as part of a passenger service.

[Karhedron]

36 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

Both Ffairfach and Llangadog used 'Rotanks'; not sure where they were attached/detached, but on the Central Wales, they ran as part of a passenger service.

 

You are right, although I have not a manged to find decent photos of the dairy at either location or milk trains.

 

I can help with destinations though. Ffairfach sent milk to the CWS creameries at Stewarts Lane and East Croydon. The latter was located away from the station, hence the need for Rotanks. Some also went to West Ealing where they were taken to the LCS creamery on Olive Road. 

 

Llangadog opened around 1957/58 and largely took over the traffic that had previously been handled by Ffairfach and Builth Wells (both of which closed around this time). Llangadog seems not have dispatched by rail for long and ceased around 1963. Most CWS creameries ceased to use rail around this time.

[Nearholmer]

East Croydon seems to be an early example of excessive ‘food miles’, in that, as we’ve explored in another thread, perfectly good milk was going from East Sussex, which is on the doorstep compared with mid-Wales, through East Croydon on its way elsewhere.

[Fat Controller]

3 hours ago, Karhedron said:

 

You are right, although I have not a manged to find decent photos of the dairy at either location or milk trains.

 

I can help with destinations though. Ffairfach sent milk to the CWS creameries at Stewarts Lane and East Croydon. The latter was located away from the station, hence the need for Rotanks. Some also went to West Ealing where they were taken to the LCS creamery on Olive Road. 

 

Llangadog opened around 1957/58 and largely took over the traffic that had previously been handled by Ffairfach and Builth Wells (both of which closed around this time). Llangadog seems not have dispatched by rail for long and ceased around 1963. Most CWS creameries ceased to use rail around this time.

'The Red Dragon and other old friends' has some photos of milk traffic on the southern end of the Central Wales. The train ran as a local passenger service from Llanelly to Pontardulais, then as a freight, changing locos at Pantyffynon. The train in the photos consisted of two 57xx panniers, 112t van, two Rotanks and three passenger coaches.      

[Karhedron]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

East Croydon seems to be an early example of excessive ‘food miles’, in that, as we’ve explored in another thread, perfectly good milk was going from East Sussex, which is on the doorstep compared with mid-Wales, through East Croydon on its way elsewhere.

 

Part of that is due to who owned which facilities. CWS had bottling plants in the Capital but most of its dispatching creameries were further out. I think their closest one to London was Wallingford in Oxfordshire but that was a pretty small place that only dispatched one tank per day.

 

There were 2 creameries in East Sussex that dispatched tankers, Billingshurst and Horam, both of which were owned by Express Dairies. They were so close to London that they were early candidates for switching to road. By the time rail tankers were introduced, most farms close to London were already dispatching their milk by road. Tje railways could only compete economically for creameries that were located beyond the effective range of lorries at the time. For example, Express Dairies at Cricklewood was a major destination for milk trains but also received milk in by road from around 120 farms in the London area.

 

Of course as lorries and roads improved, that competitive range expanded which is why creameries closer to London often switched from rail to road transport such as Horam and Frome. By the 1960s, CWS seems to have made the strategic decision to abandon rail transport all together.

[Nearholmer]

Billingshurst is in West Sussex (which is very picky, and meantvad no criticism of a truly informative answer).

[Oldddudders]

In those days Sussex was Sussex. The East/West split is a modern contrivance. 

[Hal Nail]

8 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

a modern contrivance. 

Which, if you have my brain at least, leads inevitably to the question when did humans first decide it was a good idea to approach a cows underneath, armed only with a bucket?

[Nearholmer]

I’ve got a really nice framed Sussex electoral areas map from about 1800, which I bought as a present for my father, and then inherited from him, and that acknowledges some sort of difference E&W, although it’s packed away presently, and I can’t remember exactly how/what. The two distinct county councils, plus the  distinct county boroughs like Brighton, date from 1888, so were in place before the invention of railway milk tank wagons.

 

PS: I do appreciate that, looked at in the long run, 1888 is ‘modern’.

Edited October 25, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Siberian Snooper]

2 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

In those days Sussex was Sussex. The East/West split is a modern contrivance. 

 

Even though, we had the West Sussex County Times, a weekly rag printed in Horsham since 1893.