United Dairies coal wagons?

[Karhedron]

Please can anyone tell me if United Dairies (and later Unigate) had any coal wagons in their own colours?

 

Creameries used a fair bit of coal and I just wondered if they had privately owned wagons for this or if it was delivered in GWR/BR liveried wagons. I would be very grateful if anyone can shed any light on the subject.

[DavidBelcher]

Lots of Co-Operative societies had PO coal wagons, but given the amount of pies (sometimes literally) that the Co-Op had - and still has - its fingers in (dairies, meat processing factories, banks, grocers, funeral directors, car dealerships, chemists, shoe shops, department stores, insurance, etc., etc., etc.) these may not necessarily have been for coal traffic to dairies.

 

David

[Fat Controller]

Please can anyone tell me if United Dairies (and later Unigate) had any coal wagons in their own colours?

 

Creameries used a fair bit of coal and I just wondered if they had privately owned wagons for this or if it was delivered in GWR/BR liveried wagons. I would be very grateful if anyone can shed any light on the subject.

I've never seen any photos of private-owner coal wagons for dairies. Most coal, pre-Nationalisation, would have been delivered in PO wagons owned by collieries or coal factors. Dairies would probably have burned anthracite when possible, as it produced less soot and smuts, so wagons such as 'Amalgamated Anthracite' and 'Cory' would have been seen. Post nationalisation, and certainly when United Dairies and Cow and Gate had merged to form Unigate, coal would have been delivered in BR wagons or, more likely, replaced by oil.

[Karhedron]

Resurrecting this thread after a long time, I have a few more bits of information. The first is from "The Culm Valley Railway" by Michael Messenger (Twelvehead Press 1993). On pp49-50 he states that by 1948 half of all goods traffic was coal, some being for domestic use and the rest for industrial use at the milk factory at Hemyock and also the mill at Colharbour. On p51 he states that by 1955 the milk factory was using oil for fuel, again coming by rail.
 
The second is this image of 9670 shunting a BR coal wagon at Chard Junction with the creamery just behind. I am not certain if the lorry is a private coal merchant or is simply being used to transport the coal from the wagon to the boiler room.
 

[petethemole]

I would suggest the lorry may not be a coal merchant's vehicle but that's purely my opinion. It appears to be a Morris Commercial T2 1 ton truck, built 1931-6. Coal merchants in the '50s-'60s tended to use 30cwt or 3 ton flatbeds for ease of unloading the sacks. Great picture though.

 

Pete

[Karhedron]

Thanks for the info. If it is being used internally for the Creamery, that strengthens the supposition that BR wagons were used for coal delivery rather than PO wagons (at least by the 60s).

[Karhedron]

I could be wrong but the next van along looks like a BD container van for transporting perishable products. I know in recent years that the Chard creamery produced tubs of cream. I wonder if that was their output back then as well?

[Fat Controller]

BDs were general-purpose containers; there were similar-looking containers for perishable products, but these were either ice-blue or white. Did the dairy produce any dried or condensed milk? If so, these could be incoming empty cans, or out-going product.

[Karhedron]

BDs were general-purpose containers; there were similar-looking containers for perishable products, but these were either ice-blue or white. Did the dairy produce any dried or condensed milk? If so, these could be incoming empty cans, or out-going product.

It is possible. Without information or the CWPs for the area, it is hard to tell what it produced. Many lineside creameries simply chilled milk, piped it into the tankers and dispatched it to London. Others were actually net consumers of milk and specialized in producing cheese or other processed dairy products (Bailey gate was one example).

 

Just to confuse things further, some seemed to do both and their role in the overall flow of the traffic may have varied throughout the year to balance production of raw milk against demand. I have news report that mentions Chard producing pots of cream currently but whether that was always the case I do not know.

 

I don't think Chard produced dried milk, at least not at this time as it didn't have the characteristic drying tower (at least not in any of the shots I have seen).