1980's Era Containers

[Krusty]

I think Anchor butter is or was the British brand of the NZ Dairy Board , and the name alludes to the fact it comes by ship... 

 

Anchor butter was introduced in the 1880s by a Waikato business which subsequently became part of the NZ Co-Operative Dairy Co Ltd. It was notable in those pre-refrigeration days for keeping much better than butter made by older production processes. The name always been used worldwide and these days is a Fonterra brand. The name came from a tattoo on the arm of one of the workers making the initial batch.

[TransportSteve2011]

Ex-Freightliner Nottingham here, 1977 - 1987. The Anchor Butter contract ran right up to 2012 I think, it was affectionately known as the 'Butterliner' throughout the company, originally the butter came from New Zealand and had to be loaded into 20ft containers as they weighted 18 tons when loaded and on arrival in the UK we hadn't augmented the 38 ton HGV limit, so, they couldn't use 40ft containers and the Shipping Company said that obviously loading 40ft boxes onto a ship presented its own weight distribution problems, I think that the distribution warehouse down under also had restrictions on vehicle sizes when loading on their warehouse docks, so, as refrigerated containers weren't needed OCL, a British Company who ran their own vessels to Australia from England, and ACT (Associated Container Transport Australia Ltd) also ran ships from down under to Europe, were invited to undertake the job, as between them they were the only 2 companies that had sufficient numbers of 20 foot dry ISO containers freely available that could make the round trip on this particular traffic flow, from memory they also 'leased' other shipping companies 20 footers as well when bad weather delayed shipping services and they didn't want to run short of containers. The vessels arrived in Tilbury and trains worked across daily to Swindon on 15-20 liners per trip, 7 days a week, although, from memory I'm sure they were recessed on Sundays as the Swindon site was closed for unloading. They hired 2 cranes in and 6 domestic Freightliner terminals sent allocated drivers with tractor units and appropriate trailers to Swindon for the week to work as required, basically the drivers just ran a shuttle service from the container unloading area to the warehouses setting down loads and picking up empties, then back to the yard for the empty containers to be loaded on Freightliner flats for the return working back to Tilbury, there are a few photographs on the internet showing the various workings, many of them were booked for Stratford Class 47s, although the odd double headed 37 was seen on a couple of occassions, by one of our drivers who was a bit of a trainspotter. I worked at Nottingham, drivers also attended from Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Willesden and Southampton Millbrook terminals, on a roster basis, it was good steady work for Freightliner, as a whole.

 

Just as a sidenote the liveries for Freightliner are amply illustrated by the various photographs on this thread from the likes of Paul Bartlett, etc. BR Derby built a lot of the Freightliner box containers from the mid 1960s right up to the mid 1980s, they generally constructed new 20ft, 30ft, and 40 footers for Freightliner Ltd in the various liveries over the years. We also received quite a few new 40ft containers built at WH Davis at Langwith Junction which is near Mansfield and they used to run 5 sets of empty brand new containers every few months down to the Nottingham terminal on special trains, the containers had already been 'signed off' for use, so, we put them straight to work as soon as they arrived, we utilised nearly forty 30 foot containers every day Mon-Fri at Beeston terminal for use by our customers at Boots, United Biscuits at Long Eaton and United Carriers at Wellingborough, Roadline, National Carriers, the Post Office Distribution Depot and Gratton Catalogue warehouses both at Peterborough, being some of the many companies from memory we loaded these containers at. It wasn't too difficult for BR to arrange special train workings from either BR Derby or WH Davis's at short notice with them being fairly close to us, so, they worked the containers across regularly for a few years for us to put into the Freightliner system straight away.

 

We also had a few tanktainer deliveries and collections in the early 1980s, we delivered beer and Harp Lager to Bass, Guinness and Allied Breweries at Burton On Trent, Carlsberg at Northampton, and the Charles Wells Brewery at Bedford fairly regularly, we also delivered Cider from Bulmers at Hereford which used to come across on the daily train service from Dudley in the late 1970s, that also went to Burton On Trent, all of the companies had their own tanks with their companies logos on, something train modellers never made, unsure if this was due to licencing issues, or, not.

 

Cheerz.  Transport Steve.