Flour, Oats, and Food Oils - how were they transported by rail in pre-grouping times?

[Alex TM]

Hi everyone,

 

While collecting various wagons for my firthcoming micro-layout, I realised that I had no information regarding how three essential ingredients for biscuits would have been transported in pre-grouping times.  So is anyone able to assist with the following?

 

How were flour, oats, and food oils transported by rail in pre-grouping times?

 

For example, if flour was transported in sacks, would they be transported in open or covered stock?  Alternatively, did specialised wagons exist and what did they look like?  Would then oils have been in barrels, and what sort of wagons would they have gone in?

 

Pointers towards relevant books are always welcome.

 

Thanks, and regards,

 

Alex.

[Nearholmer]

People made Staffordshire oat cakes, ate them, and then caught the train.

 

Seriously:

 

- flour and oats in sacks;

 

- “food oils” meant butter and animal fats much more than vegetable fats “back in the day” and where there wasn’t east local supply, which in many places there was from dairies and butchers, butter went either in blocks (a bit like cheese), packaged pats, or wooden drums in highly ventilated vans, and animal fat travelled as suet. When margarine began to be shipped, that went initially in wooden drums, I’m fairly sure.

 

Some railways did have enough butter traffic to have specific vans for it, but others used slightly more multifunctional vans that took fruit, milk, fresh fruit and veg too. The key point is that these vans were “passenger rated”, and ran either in special fast “perishables” trains or as part of passenger trains. This was an “into conurbations” traffic, in that more rural areas, up to quite large towns, drew from local sources - dairies and market gardens on the edge of town.

 

 

Edited January 11 by Nearholmer

[Fair Oak Junction]

13 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

- flour and oats in sacks;

 

So just moved in regular open wagons?

[Mol_PMB]

Manchester was a centre of edible oils processing, with firms such as Southern Oil (later Kraft Foods), Kilvert's Lard, and the CWS Margarine factory all connected to the Manchester Ship Canal Railway system.

Certainly from the 1920s to the 1960s, edible oils and lard were handled in bulk, being imported from Canada in tanks built into the hulls of Manchester Liners' ships, and then transferred to tank wagons of conventional appearance (though usually heated and lagged). Some of them were of the RCH 1907 design but they may have been acquired secondhand. Southern Oil tank wagons were known to serve destinations such as Keadby (Lincs) and Renfrew (Scotland); they weren't confined to the Manchester area.

I appreciate that post-dates your pre-grouping era and I suspect that wooden casks were widely used in earlier years both on board ship and rail.

 

Outside Manchester, Maypole Margarine in Southall bought its first tank wagons in October 1917. Jurgens of Purfleet were another early margarine manufacturer and may have had tank wagons around the same time.

 

Mol

[Fair Oak Junction]

Seems like a mix of vehicle types used for flour/grains

 

Edited January 11 by Fair Oak Junction

[Nearholmer]

PS: at some stage, margarine was also shipped in big tins, a bit like catering-size tin drums used for cooking oil these days.

[Skinnylinny]

10 minutes ago, Fair Oak Junction said:

Seems like a mix of vehicle types used for flour/grains

The 7-plank open there was not used for carrying flour, but coal, presumably to power the milling equipment. Note the "Empty to:" instruction: Netherseat Colliery! Certainly flour would not be transported in the same wagon either.

Edited January 11 by Skinnylinny

[PMP]

6 minutes ago, Fair Oak Junction said:

Seems like a mix of vehicle types used for flour/grains

 

 

The open wagon above is a coal wagon despite what’s written on the side. ‘Large’ factories often had their own coal wagons which were sent to collieries to run between the colliery and the factory bringing dedicated coal for the facility. You can see the route marking on the bottom left hand end. The writing and Logo was in effect advertising the factory or brand, not describing the contents of the wagon.

[Fair Oak Junction]

Yes, one day I'll learn to read the fine print 🤣

Now I've finished making a fool of myself, does that mean then that the vans were most likely used for flour/grains?

Edited January 11 by Fair Oak Junction

[Nearholmer]

http://crinolinerobot.blogspot.com/2017/02/further-back-in-time-for-dinner-1900.html?m=1
 

This is worth a read, and the TV series is worth a watch. The family portrayed are supposed to be “lower middle”, and I suspect that the meals they eat are a tiny bit too posh for that class, but it gives you an idea of the pre-grouping urban diet, which is to say notably lacking in vegetable oils, and stuffed with crazy amounts of meat.

[Alex TM]

Hi again everyone,

 

Many thanks for all these useful pieces of information, whether words or images, and the links, too.  The flour traffic branded GW van image is especially useful as the layout will be set in the Reading area.

 

The information regarding sacks and drums, etc, is great as it 'allows' for the inclusion of a wider range of open wagons on the layout along with a visible variety of loads.

 

Again, thanks.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

[Fair Oak Junction]

2 minutes ago, Alex TM said:

Many thanks for all these useful pieces of information, whether words or images, and the links, too.  The flour traffic branded GW van image is especially useful as the layout will be set in the Reading area.

 

GWR Iron Mink vans are also said to have been used for flour transportation.

[doilum]

A great question. It might get even more response in the Prototype Question section.

[Nearholmer]

53 minutes ago, Fair Oak Junction said:

So just moved in regular open wagons?

Vans more likely, because flour has to be kept dry, and all grains and flour need to be kept away from rats and mice so far as possible.

 

Oats were more a horse food (provender) than a human food, although of course porridge and various forms of oat cake/pancake have always been popular. Animal feed was treated a bit less well than human food, so more likely to go in sacks in open wagons.

 

But, I think the GWR Provender Wagons, very high-sided opens, were primarily for hay, rather than bagged oats.

 

 

[Hroth]

Regarding the coal wagon for Tewkesbury

There must have been several flour mills in the Tewkesbury district, but the one I was particularly aware of (having moored overnight near it...) was at the confluence of the Rivers Avon and Severn.  Grain arrived by barge from Gloucester, even in the mid-1970s.

 

To be honest, I've no idea how the flour, etc was sent onward, or where the fuel to drive the mill came from.

 

 

 

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

You possibly needn't worry about the product packaging as it was the trade in large scale factory manufacturing of foodstuffs that was a significant contributer to the expansion of van fleets on the railway. More secure against vermin (railway goods yards were notorious for rats) and much superior weather protection.

[PMP]

51 minutes ago, Fair Oak Junction said:

Yes, one day I'll learn to read the fine print 🤣

Now I've finished making a fool of myself, does that mean then that the vans were most likely used for flour/grains?

Some rolling stock was built and/or allocated to specific traffics. The van shown wasn’t AFAIK a specific design for solely carrying flour, but to minimise cleaning, and to ensure a ready supply of rolling stock to meet production demands, the railway companies kept some stock allocated to specific routes and produce.

Flour transported in the van would have primarily been in sacks. As industrial processes improved and increased productivity more specialised equipment was developed, such as hopper wagons. 

[Nearholmer]

Reading would have had all sorts of delicious ingredients inwards by van for Messrs Huntley & Palmer.

 

There is a thread about pre-grouping wagon loads, which covers a lot of the same ground, and has (or did have) many photos of loads and loading/unloading, including imported margarine.

 

Another thing to remember is that a lot (most) food travelled in “semi-bulk”, only getting broken down into customer packages (brown paper bags and parcels) at the local grocery shop, and that many of the containers were sent back empty, so wagon-loads of empty crates, barrels, drums, baskets, sacks etc were a common part of the distribution system. There was a fair amount of packeted, tinned, and bottled “factory made” food by WW1 (think of all the well-known brands that were established by then), but still most goods by volume were “loose”. Lots of tea and coffee only got packeted at the grocers’, for instance. 
 

When I was a kid, we had no supermarket in our small town until I was maybe 10yo, and the grocers used to roast coffee and bag it, bag tea from big boxes, cut cheese, butter, margarine, lard, and corned beef from big blocks, and I think a few old-time places were still doing  dried fruit, flour, and other “dry goods” from drums.  And, nobody would have dreamed of buying fruit and veg pre-packed - you went to the greengrocer and they either put it direct into your shopping basket or into a paper bag. Oh, and all bottles were returnable for a deposit. This was in the 1960s, not the 1910s, which makes the point that “packetisation” has been a progressive process, hardly anything in 1900, nearly everything by 2020.

Edited January 11 by Nearholmer

[Harlequin]

1 hour ago, Alex TM said:

Hi again everyone,

 

Many thanks for all these useful pieces of information, whether words or images, and the links, too.  The flour traffic branded GW van image is especially useful as the layout will be set in the Reading area.

 

The information regarding sacks and drums, etc, is great as it 'allows' for the inclusion of a wider range of open wagons on the layout along with a visible variety of loads.

 

Again, thanks.

 

Regards,

 

Alex.

Huntley & Palmers?

 

[Brimstone]

The oat feedstuff requirement for horses in the major cities was huge until the post WW1 motor boom, due in part to surplus army vehicles, whilst this was largely van traffic the similar straw requirement was transported in open wagons and was liable to catch fire from engine sparks, part of the reason for example for the electrification of the quayside branch in Newcastle at the start of the last century.

[Dave John]

I would agree with most grains being carried in sacks early on sheeted opens and later vans. There was some bulk grain traffic early on, there are a couple of pre-grouping grain hopper wagons in the SRPS collection. Probably only used on a few specific routes where bulk handling equipment had been installed. 

 

http://www.srpsmuseum.org.uk/10099.htm

 

 

 

 

[Michael Hodgson]

6 hours ago, Fair Oak Junction said:

Seems like a mix of vehicle types used for flour/grains

 

 

The van would be for flour; the 7-plank coal wagon would be for coal from the colliery named on the side to the flour mills.

[Nearholmer]

I’ve just noticed that that flour van is for Wantage Road. There was a big flour mill at Wantage, one of the main sources of traffic on the Wantage Tramway, which this van must have trundled up and down. Last time I was there it was still going, but having just checked it seems that it finally closed in 2022.

 

I’ve also been looking through Mrs Beeton’s Dictionary of Everyday Cookery, probably on the kitchen shelf of every ‘respectable’ homein the land pre-WW1, and I haven’t found a single mention of any vegetable oil in it so far. Vast amounts of butter, plenty of suet, some goose-fat, a bit of lard here and there, but no vegetable oil. And, no margarine either - it was thought of as very inferior stuff (and, I think at the time it was made from animal fat anyway).

 

 

[Metropolitan H]

7 hours ago, Fair Oak Junction said:

Seems like a mix of vehicle types used for flour/grains

 

It is my understanding that the GWR "Flour Traffic Only" van not only was empty to Wantage Road - then into the town on the Wantage Tramway - but also had a regular destination a bit to the east, at Huntley and Palmer's biscuit factory in Reading.

 

H&Pnad some pretty blue Peckett 0-4-0Sts for along while, but by the time I was travelling into Reading from Bracknell (1955 on) the internal traffic locos were a fleet of smart blue fireless locos. The only H&P private owner wagons were open coal wagons - all shipping of products by rail was in hired vans - mainly LSWR or later SR (as I understand things).

 

Regards

Chris H

[Alex TM]

On 11/01/2024 at 16:52, Nearholmer said:

When I was a kid, we had no supermarket in our small town until I was maybe 10yo, and the grocers used to roast coffee and bag it, bag tea from big boxes, cut cheese, butter, margarine, lard, and corned beef from big blocks, and I think a few old-time places were still doing  dried fruit, flour, and other “dry goods” from drums.  And, nobody would have dreamed of buying fruit and veg pre-packed - you went to the greengrocer and they either put it direct into your shopping basket or into a paper bag. Oh, and all bottles were returnable for a deposit. This was in the 1960s, not the 1910s, which makes the point that “packetisation” has been a progressive process, hardly anything in 1900, nearly everything by 2020.

Hi,

 

So much of what you say is so familiar, even though I suspect I am a little younger than yourself.

 

I grew up in a large town in the 70s, and things had not moved on that much from what you have described.  Somewhat jealous, that you could get proper coffee where you grew up; we only had jars of a dark brown powder that, when added to boiling water, made a similalrly coloured fluid that was either flavourless or brackish!

 

Regards,

 

Alex.