Dairy operations

[Karhedron]

This shot at Seaton shows the other side of the operation with churns arriving by lorry and being unloaded at the creamery before being cooled and piped into the waiting milk tankers.

 

[LBRJ]

Every days a school day.

I had always been lead (including by a letter to a magazine from a former MMB manager) that top filling just created too much froth (like some threads on here do!)

[Karhedron]

On 17/06/2019 at 09:34, LBRJ said:

You can see the steam lance used for cleaning the tanks out sticking out of the tank top access hole.

 

The cleaning of tanks at Vauxhall was rather unpopular with travellers as apparently the residue was just rinsed out onto the tracks. This gave the Windsor platforms a rather cheesy aroma in warm weather.

[Karhedron]

On 12/06/2019 at 17:18, The Johnster said:

You don't actually need a dairy, though this might be defeating the object a bit.  At Marshfield between Cardiff and Newport the dairy was about a quarter of a mile up the road from the railway, and milk was delivered to the yard in road tankers for transferring into the tankers.

 

The same thing happened at Dolcoath sidings in Cornwall. There is a rather nice shot of it here in the twilight years of milk on the rails with all the tankers open and ready for filling. The chap perched on top of the lorry suggests this was in the days before health and safety.

 

[Karhedron]

19 hours ago, Cofga said:

I found this photo even more interesting since it shows a milk loading operation in an old engine house or goods shed at Torrington. Must have been a big milk producing area since there is a line of tankers waiting on an adjacent track. I wonder whether the piping line over the tankers is for cleaning the exteriors. I don’t see any way for the staff to get up there to connect a steam cleaning line. This would be an easy to model operation since you could use one of the Peco goods sheds and scratch build the overhead piping easily. I picked up one of the Bachmann milk loading structure flats recently and may just tack it in to a goods shed instead. Here is the photo.

 

 

 

Torrington was (and indeed still is) a big dairy producing area. The south west of Britain tends to have a warm, damp climate thanks to prevailing winds from the Atlantic. This combination of good rainfall and mostly gentle terrain makes the region from Cornwall through to Wiltshire prime dairy country (other big production areas include Wales and Cumbria). The buildings at Torrington fail to convey the scale of the industry because this was just a loading shed. The milk was actually brought in by lorry from the Torridge vale dairy nearby. This was one of the biggest dairy plants in the country.

 

 

It does show that the size and style of lineside structures associated with dairy traffic can vary tremendously. At the country end, you can have anything from simple siding to a massive plant like Torridge Vale, Lostwithiel or St Erth (the latter 2 of which were rail-connected). Similarly at the London end, you could have anything from the massive United Dairies bottling plant at Wood Lane to the one at Vauxhall, tucked almost invisibly beneath the station arches.

[Karhedron]

My own creamery was kit-bashed from a mix of Walthers, Peco and Ratio parts.

 

 

It is based (very loosely) on the rather natty art-deco creamery at Moreton-in-the-Marsh

 

[Karhedron]

On 16/06/2019 at 09:03, AMJ said:

For variety with a rail connected dairy, they might need a wagon of coal delivered for power purposes.

 

Indeed, most dairies had a boiler house, often with a distinctive square chimney to power them. Coal wagon deliveries were certainly still a thing in the 1960s as the photo of Chard creamery below shows.

 

[Cofga]

• Thanks for all those revelations. This has been a very instructive thread which has completely changed how I will develop the model of the tanker loading facility per Torrington. I have never seen a model of a loading facility repurposing a goods shed like that and it will definitely add interest to the station area. Thanks to all. One additional question. Would there have been more than one fill hose on the overhead apparatus or just the one?

 

Edited June 18, 2019 by Cofga

[Steamport Southport]

I always thought the St Ivel one was a made up livery. But here's one as well as a few others in surprisingly cleanish condition.

 

http://www.semgonline.com/vandw/milk_01.html

 

 

 

Jason

[Fat Controller]

28 minutes ago, Steamport Southport said:

I always thought the St Ivel one was a made up livery. But here's one as well as a few others in surprisingly cleanish condition.

 

http://www.semgonline.com/vandw/milk_01.html

 

 

 

Jason

By the end of milk traffic, the St Ivel ones were about the only clean ones.

[Karhedron]

21 minutes ago, Cofga said:

Would there have been more than one fill hose on the overhead apparatus or just the one?

 

That is a good question. The more I look at the photos, the more I am wondering if the overhead apparatus is actually pipework at all. If you look at the photos below, it seems to stand clear of the loading shed and there is nothing actually running from the apparatus through or into the shed.

 

 

 

 

 

Possibly the apparatus is not pipework as such but simply a rail that a hose could be run out along. There was a similar arrangement at Seaton (also Express Dairies) but not at Chard. I can't find any photographs that are quite clear enough to make out exactly what it is. 

[Cofga]

If you go back to the second B&W photo I posted you can see the piping runs directly over the centerline of the tankers. Also there is a hose dangling down from the overhead into the open hatch in the second tanker. Look to the right of that and you can see piping coming from the shed that goes up to the overhead pipes. So I am pretty convinced that this pipe carries the milk to the tanker. My remaining question is why is there all the other piping extending the length of the siding over the tankers? If this is used only to fill the second tanker as appears to be happening in the photo then the rest of the overhead piping seems superfluous. As an editor once told me about a scientific paper I wrote, “that is some pretty fancy skating on pretty thin ice”.

[Ramblin Rich]

8 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

I always thought the St Ivel one was a made up livery. But here's one as well as a few others in surprisingly cleanish condition.

 

http://www.semgonline.com/vandw/milk_01.html

Jason

From that link, another 'every day's a school day' moment I hadn't realised before:

"United Dairies amalgamated with Cow & Gate to become Unigate in 1959."

 

I can't throw any more light on the filling arrangements at Torrington, but I do recall that once the passenger traffic finished, a canopy was built on the up side platform to allow tanks to be filled there rather than shunt through the goods shed. There's an image about ⅔ way down the Disused Stations entry, which also shows the fertilizer depot built on the site of the goods shed:

http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/t/torrington/

 

 

[HillsideDepot]

I've been musing with ideas from Torrington for a mini layout for a number of years and have collected a number of images from the web to aid me. I have also scanned a few book/magazine images so I have everything in one place, and one of these, a Bernard Mills photo, shows the goods shed pipe loading three tanks at once. There is a hose attached to the stop block end of the overhead pipe, one in the middle (with a man on top of the tank) as seen in photos in this thread and also one into the tank just outside the goods shed. The caption mentions that only three tanks could be filled at once, necessitating lots of shunting (ideal for a layout!). There is a road tanker off loading at the corner of the Provender Store type building, a flexi pipe leading to a vertical one up the corner of the building to the overhead gantry arrangement.

 

The main subject of the photo is a clay train in the main platform with a Baby Warship at the far end. I can't, for copyright reasons, post the photo, but I think it was in Traction, and at a guess a fairly early issue. 

[Cofga]

Adrian, thanks for that comment, it answered a lot of questions. It really is amazing how much information you can find in just one photo like that.  I will definitely include 3 filling hoses on the overhead apparatus. I am thinking a Thorneycroft open lorry loaded with milk churns being unloaded will complete the scene. 

[andy stroud]

I could be wrong but I think the tankers would have been filled using pipe fittings at the bottom of the tanks. Thats how road tankers are filled. I think the open covers on the tops of the tankers are to vent the tank, to let air out as the milk is piped in. Also the top covers are for inspection. I think overhead pipework would be for cleaning/washing out the tanks.

Edited June 19, 2019 by andy stroud

[Guest Jack Benson]

On 12 June 2019 at 22:59, phil_sutters said:

In designing your dairy, it is interesting to note that when the Wiltshire United Dairies Bason Bridge Milk Factory changed from churns to tank wagons in the 1930s, they had a new loop siding built on the far side of the S&D Burnham to Evercreech line. Milk was piped over the line on a gantry. The former platform for the churn traffic remained in use for fuel and sheet steel to come in and milk processed into cheese and tinned milk products to go out.

Hi,

This is not totally correct, churns were still in use for transporting milk by road from farm to processor until the 60s (maybe even later) However, the end product of cheese, butter etc. was transported by rail in vans. For example, the small depot at  Sturminster Newton was mostly churns in and boxed cheese rounds out by rail. 

 

However, the daily milk train to Bailey Gate, usually consisted of coaches plus two milk tanks AND a NPCS vehicle containing churns - a bit of an anachronism by the late 50s.

 

This Thames Trader was bought by the MMB for service at Sturminster Newton and spent its entire working career servicing the local farms.

 

 

This is the road side of the Sturminster Newton cheese factory in the 40s, nice Austin.

 

 

And a track plan of Sturminster Newton, the milk dock is at the oneo'clock position.

 

 

Cheers

 

Jack

[Fat Controller]

Well into the late 1960s, many farms in the Gower and South-Eastern Carmarthenshire were constructing roadside loading banks, so the MMB lorries could pick up churns without having to turn round in constricted farmyards.

[hmrspaul]

On 18/06/2019 at 15:05, Fat Controller said:

By the end of milk traffic, the St Ivel ones were about the only clean ones.

But be careful because that livery appears to have been restricted to 2000 gallon barrels (most milk are 3000 gals) and only the LMS had these. Some late photos in here, https://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/lmsmilk

This HMRS Journal has some lovely colour photos of when they were newly refurbished https://hmrs.org.uk/publications/the-journal/volume-20-number-5-january-march-2010.html

 

Paul

[hmrspaul]

48 minutes ago, Fat Controller said:

Well into the late 1960s, many farms in the Gower and South-Eastern Carmarthenshire were constructing roadside loading banks, so the MMB lorries could pick up churns without having to turn round in constricted farmyards.

Yes, I was just about to comment on remembering seeing churns on small loading banks at the roadside when I worked for MAFF in south Wales in the summer of 1970.

As a total aside I had a trial on a farm a few miles from Rhayder where the main yard was something out of central casting - I had a book as a child which had a farm scene with pigs/lambs/chickens/cattle all hanging about in the mud and this farm was just like that (and a very kind family as well). It took 3 - 4 hours to drive there from Llanishen, Cardiff.

 

Paul

Edited June 22, 2019 by hmrspaul

[PatB]

My family moved to rural Somerset in November 1973. I'm pretty sure I remember at least the smaller farms moving their milk in churns via roadside platforms, although I'd be pushed to recall when, exactly, they stopped. These were, of course, the "modern" cylindrical churns, rather than the older conical beasties. 

[Karhedron]

I have not found an exact date when churn traffic stopped being carried by rail. Apparently it started to decline after the 1955 strike. According to HOME WITH THE MILK - by R. C. Riley, churns were still being carried in 1959 but in much reduced quantities. The latest date I can find for churns is 1961 so I would tentatively propose that this is close to the time churn traffic ceased (obviously it was still being used to transport milk from farms to the creameries beyond this date).

 

A more definite cut-off date would be the implementation of the "Western Agreement" in October 1964. This focused milk train traffic on bulk tanker trains on the ex-GWR and SR lines (Penzance, South Wales and Torrington were the main starting points). Milk trains into London from the MR and ER ceased at this time. Some milk trains continued to run on the MR and ER after this date but they were normally balancing loads for food production rather than for fresh milk. I have a shot of a class 40 taking a long train of empties from Appleby back to Swindon in the summer of 1979. I would guess they had taken excess milk north for cheese production.

Edited June 25, 2019 by Karhedron

[john new]

Useful reference source just posted into the research thread.

 

[Fat Controller]

26 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

I have not found an exact date when churn traffic stopped being carried by rail. Apparently it started to decline after the 1955 strike. According to HOME WITH THE MILK - by R. C. Riley, churns were still being carried in 1959 but in much reduced quantities. The latest date I can find for churns is 1961 so I would tentatively propose that this is close to the time churn traffic ceased (obviously it was still being used to transport milk from farms to the creameries beyond this date).

 

A more definite cut-off date would be the implementation of the "Western Agreement" in October 1964. This focused milk train traffic on bulk tanker trains on the ex-GWR and SR lines (Penzance, South Wales and Torrington were the main starting points). Milk trains into London from the MR and ER ceased at this time. Some milk trains continued to run after this date but they were normally balancing loads for food production rather than for fresh milk. I have a shot of a class 40 taking a long train of empties from Appleby back to Swindon in the summer of 1979. I would guess they had taken excess milk north for cheese production.

A former colleague, Stephen Poole, spent some time as one of the last 'Milk Train Controllers' at Paddington; In 'Beyond the Crumbling Edge', he tells of a train running north-south (or V/V), only to be sent back loaded. I pity the poor soul who had to empty and clean the tanks afterwards. The smell of 'fresh' milk on the outside of the tanks was enough to turn the stomach, let alone milk that had been 'tank-aged' for a few days.

Incidentally, stale milk is good for blending in new brick or stone work; just paint it on. This is a job best done last thing on Friday afternoon, before a Bank Holiday.....

[Guest Jack Benson]

A few more examples of milk trucks from the 50-60s, as much part of 'Dairy operations' as the rail vehicles.

 

And an interesting comparison between the Thames RPK 135 and Thames Trader 9483 PF