D1059 Posted July 15, 2012 Share Posted July 15, 2012 Sorry, I meant the cessation of milk traffic in general. Summer 1980 seems fairly conclusive. That matches my recollections at the time as well. Swindon (IIRC) then took the underframes of some of the redundant tanks, refurbished them, and added new tanks (of a more modern appearance) to provide a backup fleet in case of bad weather or other disruption to the long distance road deliveries. I'd be interested if anyone has or knows of photos of the refurbished tanks actually in use. I've only seen photos of them in storage and have never even heard of any revenue earning use. Can't remember when they were scrapped either, but do remember thinking what a waste of money. STEVE Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rugd1022 Posted July 15, 2012 Share Posted July 15, 2012 There's a colour photo of the refurbished tanks parked on the Up side at Lostwithiel in one of the Ian Allan portfolio books, might be the one on theWestern Region or Class 50s. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
hmrspaul Posted July 15, 2012 Share Posted July 15, 2012 There's a colour photo of the refurbished tanks parked on the Up side at Lostwithiel in one of the Ian Allan portfolio books, might be the one on theWestern Region or Class 50s. They were only parked there, not in use http://paulbartlett.zenfolio.com/mmbmilk There has been recent mention on one of the numerous internet groups I cover by someone that worked for MMB (or for BR?) of trial runs of these. They never had regular use, and my understanding is that it was never intended to use them for any regular traffic. Steve - Insurance is always a waste of money until it is needed. That is the nature of insurance - it provides peace of mind. Paul Bartlett Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karhedron Posted July 15, 2012 Share Posted July 15, 2012 There's a colour photo of the refurbished tanks parked on the Up side at Lostwithiel in one of the Ian Allan portfolio books, might be the one on theWestern Region or Class 50s. Sounds like this one. http://www.flickr.com/photos/geoffsimages/6933195671/in/faves-39347043@N07/ Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karhedron Posted July 16, 2012 Share Posted July 16, 2012 Another thought crosses my mind. We have evidence that this is an empty working so what would be the balancing northbound working? Perhaps it was to take excess milk produced in the west country up north to be processed into cheese or even simply dried to make powdered milk. We typically think of milk flows as being from creameries at the country end to bottling plants at the town end. The reality was more complicated and some creameries received significant inward flows at certain times of the year to make other products. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Controller Posted July 16, 2012 Share Posted July 16, 2012 Another thought crosses my mind. We have evidence that this is an empty working so what would be the balancing northbound working? Perhaps it was to take excess milk produced in the west country up north to be processed into cheese or even simply dried to make powdered milk. We typically think of milk flows as being from creameries at the country end to bottling plants at the town end. The reality was more complicated and some creameries received significant inward flows at certain times of the year to make other products. Stephen Poole's account of the milk traffic, which I mentioned previously, said that West Country milk was sent to Carlisle when the southern creameries had a surfeit; however it wasn't unknown for the wagons to be returned loaded with the same milk. The explanation for the destination might be the various creameries in the North-West that dealt with dried, condensed, and otherwise processed milk products; these had lost their rail connections, so Carlisle was probably a transhipment point for road forwarding. 'Raw' milk still travels appreciable distances; 'Mansel Davies ab Fab' lorries are often to be seen around Dover and Folkestone, heading to the continent. There has been traffic, in intermodal tanks by rail, from Abbeville to the Parma region of Italy, within fairly recent times. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Karhedron Posted October 8, 2012 Share Posted October 8, 2012 I think that we finally have an answer to this little puzzle courtesy of a gentleman on the BRCS yahoo group who used to work at the MMB in the 1970s. Until quotas came in in the 80s , production with EC subsidies was roaring ahead faster than we could build factories ...The other problem was over Christmas or peak ..the May bank holiday , where throwback ..canceled retail orders, again overwhelmed us and so milk trains were loaded up and sent on a ride to nowhere to *lose * them out of the national processing balance for a couple of days . Some of the eventual deliveries were to Carlise to utilize the old and obsolete drying plant at Border Dairies which was retained on standby for such problems. Much of the use was because we were paying for the standby fleet so we might as well use it and free up road tankers for else where ...not because Rail was the *best * way of moving the milk So it looks like the empties in the OP's photo were probably empties returning from one of the plants around Carlisle after converying surplus to be dried. Apparently there was a Nestles at Dalston as well as MMB Aspatria and Egremont round the coast. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozzyo Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 Going O/T, but still keeping it on topic, I seem to remember that a lot of milk tanks were glass lined. How did they do this? Was the glass sprayed in to give a coating? Or sheets of glass and then what. OzzyO. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 Going O/T, but still keeping it on topic, I seem to remember that a lot of milk tanks were glass lined. How did they do this? Was the glass sprayed in to give a coating? Or sheets of glass and then what. OzzyO. From memory it's not actually glass as we think of it in windows etc, more a (silver?) vitreous enamel (paint?), I suspect its a marketing thing saying a tank is glass lined for hygiene is more easily understood by the public than a vitreous enamel lining. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Controller Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 From memory it's not actually glass as we think of it in windows etc, more a (silver?) vitreous enamel (paint?), I suspect its a marketing thing saying a tank is glass lined for hygiene is more easily understood by the public than a vitreous enamel lining. Quite common in process equipment for the chemical and food industries; the enamel I remember (notably inside Saunders valves) was a pale green, IIRC. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozzyo Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 From memory it's not actually glass as we think of it in windows etc, more a (silver?) vitreous enamel (paint?), I suspect its a marketing thing saying a tank is glass lined for hygiene is more easily understood by the public than a vitreous enamel lining. Quite common in process equipment for the chemical and food industries; the enamel I remember (notably inside Saunders valves) was a pale green, IIRC. So it could have been more like the resin coating that would have been use with fibre "glass". So to use the word "glass" coated would not have been that far out? OzzyO. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Porcy Mane Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 I may be wrong but I was told by a Guy that worked in a wagon shops that the internals of milk tanks were coated with a type of Glass fibre resin? Porcy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozzyo Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 From memory it's not actually glass as we think of it in windows etc, more a (silver?) vitreous enamel (paint?), I suspect its a marketing thing saying a tank is glass lined for hygiene is more easily understood by the public than a vitreous enamel lining. Sorry Boris, I may have jumped ahead of you in your reply, the use of vitreous enamel was well understood by most of the public as a lot of their pots and pans would have been covered in it. Think of your billy can on the foot plate. To get it to "stick" to the inside of the tank you would have to get the tanks up to the melting point of the "glass" enamel. Then you would have to move the tanks around to make sure that you had an even coat on all of the inside. I'm not saying that it couldn't be done, as this seem to be the best answer to my own question. OzzyO. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fat Controller Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 Sorry Boris, I may have jumped ahead of you in your reply, the use of vitreous enamel was well understood by most of the public as a lot of their pots and pans would have been covered in it. Think of your billy can on the foot plate. To get it to "stick" to the inside of the tank you would have to get the tanks up to the melting point of the "glass" enamel. Then you would have to move the tanks around to make sure that you had an even coat on all of the inside. I'm not saying that it couldn't be done, as this seem to be the best answer to my own question. OzzyO. The enamel would be applied as a mixture of very finely ground glass (called frit), mixed with an equally fine clay as a paste/thick liquid; this would then be heated to fuse the glass to the substrate (the steel tank). The heating would be by gas burners of some description. My wife uses a variation of this technique (using finely powdered silver combined with clay) to make jewellery. Whilst the temperatures involved would be high, they would be achievable using industrial kilns- this is how ceramics are made, after all. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ozzyo Posted October 10, 2012 Share Posted October 10, 2012 The enamel would be applied as a mixture of very finely ground glass (called frit), mixed with an equally fine clay as a paste/thick liquid; this would then be heated to fuse the glass to the substrate (the steel tank). The heating would be by gas burners of some description. My wife uses a variation of this technique (using finely powdered silver combined with clay) to make jewellery. Whilst the temperatures involved would be high, they would be achievable using industrial kilns- this is how ceramics are made, after all. Thanks for that, I suppose after all that, all they would then have to do was then make sure that any outlet/filler pipes were clear and that the top "filler" was not chipped. After that it would be to mount it onto the frames and bolt all the fittings on. OK I know it wont be that simple, but I hope that you get what I'm saying. Thanks for the input, OzzyO. PS. sorry for taking it O/T. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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