Karhedron

@David J Hayes Thanks for putting up the timetables from 1968 as well, these are really informative.

I do have one quesion though, quite a few workings show up between Kenny O and Willesden. I am guessing that these are for the Unigate Scrubbs Lane bottling plant at Mitre Bridge Junction. The map at the end of the article mentions several destinations and hubs around London but only lists Willesden as a hub and makes no mention of the bottling plant. Do you know if it had closed by 1968? I am guessing it was still in operation as I can't see a need for trip workings to Willesden otherwise. The LMR had largely cease milk train operations by this time as far as I am aware apart from the Shrewsbury service that you noted. But there seem to be more trip workings to Willesden than that one train would account for.

I also just picked up my copy. A great article and very informative. Really looking forwrards to part 2. :)

On 09/09/2022 at 12:05, ModRXsouth said:

It would be really incredible if photos exist of a Warship or Western at Morden South!

 Sadly I think that may be unlikely. 6O19, the direct Chard Junction - Morden milk train was scheduled to reach Morden shortly after midnight. The chances of a keen photographer being around to catch a such a routine working and get a decent photograph in the dark are pretty small I would guess.

On 12/09/2022 at 16:12, David J Hayes said:

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I think such workings between Shropshire and the capital may have travelled via Birmingham Snow Hill during in the steam era.

You are quite correct. There was a regular flow from the IMS creamery at Dorrington the Rossmore Road bottling plant at Marylebone until the 1960s. IMS seems to have ceased operation somewhere around 1950 and I think the Dorrington creamery passed into Unigate's hands.

7 hours ago, Not Jeremy said:

I know that Matt was in touch with Glen, and we certainly have some good information and images in the book that have come from that source.

 

Matt may wish to comment further on this aspect, I will leave that to him as he had the contact with Glen Woods, whose loss was very sad indeed. Glen had talked about doing a book, so I would think that this may well be what is being remembered on this thread.

Yes, Glen was kind enough to share a lot of his research on SR milk traffic for me to include in the forthcoming book. He was always very pleasant to chat to and happy to share his considerable knowledge with anyone who was interested.

I am looking forward to these forthcoming articles very much. One thing I have learned during my research is that there is always more to learn. Just when you think you understand a subject, you discover some surprising new fact that kicks off a whole fresh line of research.

Here is another shot of Builth Wells looking in the opposite direction. It does not show the trackwork but the creamery can be seen beyond the level crossing.

On 16/07/2022 at 13:36, The Stationmaster said:

Oops. I nearly forgot the creamery.  If it is aprivate siding (which I assume to be the case) it would definitely havea gate at its boundary with the railway.  a trap point is not essential unless there s a falling gradient towards the railway property and/or the creamery is operating its own engine for internal shuunting.  Don't forget that it connects to sidings, not toa passenger line so there was no requirement for a trap. 

Agreed. The above combination of features can be seen at the boundary to the CWS Creamery at Builth Wells. The Creamery is on the far left, the middle track is a siding and only the right hand track is a running line. 

Here is a photo of a Q1 bringing the empties from Morden back onto the mainline at Wimbledon. There is a Stove-R at the rear.

I have found a photo of the South Morden milk being shunted. As this was only a trip working for empties to Clapham Junction, it did not merit the normal passenger brake van and instead just had a normal goods brake. I have seen Stove-Rs and Stannier 50' brake coaches on the South Morden milk but I can't find the photos at the moment.

On 15/07/2022 at 12:49, ModRXsouth said:

Your mention of Van Bs and Queen Mary Brakes in the milk trains is a particular revelation so I hope there is also a chance some photos exist. A miracle if such photos show the Morden South trains!

The Stanier 50’ BG - central square lookout port - must be the type shown in the photo referred to in my original query.
I have also just realised that all of your stated brakes are available in N gauge, as do four types of Express Dairy milk tanks: Dapol six wheeled navy blue, sky blue, silver and Peco four wheel black. Also egg vans from Farish and Peco for extra stock variety.

Browse through some photos of SR milk trains and you should find some with Maunsell Vans. Here is a picture of a QM van on a milk train at Seaton Junction. None specifically of the Morden milk train. This was normally a trip working from Clapham Junction so could have featured any of the brake vehicles mentioned above.

Just a word of warning. The light blue Express Dairy tank with the swoosh logo is fictitious. Express Dairy painted their lorries in that livery but never their rail tanks.

The Peco tank is also incorrect as it is 4-wheeled. 4-wheeled milk tanks did exist but they were the early design built in the late 1920s and were found to be unstable at speed so were quickly replaced with the 6-wheeled design in the 1930s. Express Dairy never bought any 4-wheeled tanks, they went straight to the 6-wheeled pattern.

This means that only the Dark Blue and Silver designs are historically accurate. The good news is that there was a long period of overlap in the 50s and 60s were you could see both liveries in the same train.

There is a post from the Bluebell railway which includes a quick history of the Sheffield Park dairy here.

https://www.danehillhistory.org/uploads/3/9/8/4/39840075/sheffield_park_station.docx

It looks like @Nearholmer is right. The premises were taken over by Express Dairy in 1926, a year before milk tanks were introduced. They then stopped dispatching by rail in 1933, just around the time many dairies were being upgraded to handle tank traffic. It is a shame as it sounds like quite a large and interesting place with their own 2' gauge line to take churns over to the station so their output must have been significant.

On 03/07/2022 at 19:47, Nearholmer said:

Milk tankers did run on the Cuckoo Line, from Horam IIRC, and there was churn traffic from several stations, notably Mayfield, almost certainly carried in ex-LBSCR six-wheel, passenger rated vans until the SR built long-wheelbase four wheel passenger rated vans became universal around the time of WW2. I think both tanker and churn traffic from the area were early victims of road tankers once the A21 was half good enough, because the road run to the SE London bottling plants is so short. I started a thread about it, but can’t remember what it was called! Try searching ‘Horam’.

 

I’m less sure about Sheffield Park. I know the dairy took milk inwards in churns by rail, and also sent milk and cream outwards in churns by rail to London and Brighton; I don’t think it sent tankers to London, because it went through a period out of use in the 1930s when rail tankers came into use, but others might know better.

I think you are right on both counts. I have not seen any records of tanks from Sheffield park although the dairy was adjacent to the line. It is not impossible, but as you say, if it was out of use in the 1930s, it seems unlikely it was upgraded to handle tanks.

Milk tanks from Horam were indeed an early victim of the move to road. It is quite understandable as milk from Horam generally went to Eltham which was only about 50 miles away by road. However the rail journey involved a convoluted route via Groombridge and then Victoria before being worked back out to Mottingham from where it was driven by lorry to Eltham. You can't really blame Express Dairies for deciding to cut out the middle man. Tanks from Horam seem to have stopped in 1953 which I think makes it the first dairy that handled tanks to lose its traffic to the road.

On 26/12/2016 at 01:10, The Johnster said:

Anywhere but the Valleys would have had a dairy...

Not quite true. There was one rail-served dairy at Trecynon, just north of Aberdare owned by CWS. This was a bottling plant as far as I can tell that supplied the valleys. Usually this was local milk but supplies were sometimes brought in by rail from Builth Wells when local supplies could not meet demand.

On 14/06/2022 at 13:39, ModRXsouth said:

Taking the above quote further, aside from BG, could the ‘passenger’ brake vans on the Southern milk trains to Vauxhall/Morden in the 60s and 70s (and until their conclusion?) have been a Van C or Stove R? 

Passenger brake vans generally stopped appearing in milk trains in 1969 when the rules were changed to allow the Guard or Second Man to ride in the rear cab of diesel locos. They continued to appear occasionally if the loco was single-cabbed. The only place I can think of where this happened regularly was the West-country milk at Vauxhall which was worked to Waterloo and then shunted back by the station pilot (often a class 09 shunter) after the morning rush.

The SR used quite a variety of brake vehicles on milk trains. Van Bs, Van Cs, Stove Rs and Queen Mary Brakes were all quite common seen. Stannier 50' BGs were also fairly common. These brake vehicles rarely carried much apart from the Guard so the smaller the better in most cases so as not to waste motive power hauling empty air. BR Mk1 brakes were not common as they were still fairly new and also quite heavy but they did turn up occasionally, including the aforementioned Waterloo - Vauxhall trip.

I have just received mine. Whilst it is good overall, the pain finish does leave a little to be desired. Also, the shade used for the NSE silver grey is much darker than I was expecting based both on the website artwork and the real thing. My recollection is that it was much lighter and could be mistaken for white unless you looked closely.

@woodenhead I am glad it has been of some help. :)

7 hours ago, Penrhos1920 said:

That's an intersting brake van in that first photo.  Looks like a K17 postal brake van that's escaped from a mail train.

I think it is a Dean clerestory brake so a K17 is certainly plausible.

2 hours ago, gz3xzf said:

Which way up do you put the magnets for the uncouplers?

I use these in N gauge and the trick is that it does not matter as long as they are opposite polarity. If one is North Pole up, the other needs to be South Pole up but it does not matter which is which.

I love a good GWR BLT and I look forward to watching this one develop.

14 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Is that the same kind as the rotank at Didcot?

 

https://didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/article.php/214/no-3030-rotank-flat-wagon

Very similar. The preserved example at Didcot is a post-war diagram O49 Rotank, the one shown above is a diagram O37 which was the first design of Rotank that the GWR built. The preserved example was built for Henry Edwards and Son which actually had a small dairy near Kensington Olympia on Hoffland Road. Here is a photo of a pre-war LMS tank for the same company which gives an idea of how they would have looked when new (courtesy of the late Glen Woods).

Here is an aerial view of the HE&S dairy in Kensington in 1939 showing the station on the left.

14 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Didn’t we establish in another thread/discussion that rotanks were unloaded at East Croydon at some date? Dead easy run from Addison Road, and although I think regular passenger service between the two places had ceased by the 1930s, there were NPCS trains, worked through by LMS locos.

Yes, the Rotanks unloaded at East Croydon were the CWS ones for the dairy on the corner of Lebanon Road and Leslie Park Road. That UD Rotank would have been going somewhere else.

They say a picture speaks a thousand words and the Didcot Railway Centre has just posted this lovely shot of 2973 Robins Bolitho on a milk train at Kensington Olympia. This is a proper mixed bag with a Rotank at the front and a mix of 4-wheeled and 6-wheeled milk tanks. There is a mix of both United Dairies and CWS tanks in the rake as well as 2 brake vans in the rake.

Not much information is given on the webpage but with a little detective work, we can figure out some details. The lead Rotank is 2501, one of only 3 Rotanks that the GWR constructed for United Dairies which entered traffic in 1932. 2973 was withdrawn in 1933. Baesd on the bare trees, I am pretty confident this photo was taken in the winter of 1932/33. The only GWR station to dispatch UD Rotanks was Maiden Newton in Dorset which dispatched tanks to the UD bottling plant in Forest Hill around this time.

If my estimate of the date is correct, the CWS tank is probably heading for either Wallingford or Melksham as I think these were the only CWS dairies on the GWR at that time handling rail tanks. I am not sure where it would have unloaded. CWS had a short-lived unloading point at Clapham Junction at this time but I have only heard of it being used to discharge Rotanks. The CWS had a larger facility at Stewarts Lane but I have not been able to find out the date that it opened.

The numerous 4-wheeled tanks were probably serving Mitre Bridge and/or Vauxhall. The large United Dairies plant at Wood Lane did not open until 1934.

The lead Rotank is interesting as I do not know what livery it was in. The first batch of Unitead Dairies tanks were painted white but tanks built in the early 30s were in a darker livery with white lettering. I have also seen photos of 6-wheeled tanks in this livery so it was not limited to Rotanks. The annoying thing is that I cannot work out what colour was used as there seems to be no record I can find. My personal guess is that they were painted in the dark orange colour scheme of contemporary UD road vehicles as it looks about the rigght shade and I cannot think what other colour might have been used. Does anyone have a definitive answer to this? This is the colour I think it might have been.

Well it is not a great picture but at least it is a picture. Historic England have published some new aerial photos including this shot from 1968 which shows the CWS dairy with half a dozen milk tanks in residence. 

https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/archive/collections/aerial-photos/record/EAW179060

I would try contacting RevolutioN. If they want you to go via your retailer, they will probably tell you so at that point. If you get in touch with the retailer, they will probably just send it back to RevolutioN anyway. This way offers the potential to cut out the middle-man.

On 18/02/2022 at 11:54, woodworkwilly said:

Does anyone know much about them and if this is the case were milk tankers collected from along the LMS main line taken through these tunnels to the Co-op dairy depot at Stewarts Lane. I'm as happy as the next person to use modellers license however it would be good to know if it actually did happen.

Stewarts Lane was served by Ffairfach, Melksham and Wallingford creameries, all on the GWR IIRC. Traffic patterns varied over the years but they were commonly worked via Reading to Redhill. The CWS only had a one small creamery on the LMS at John O'Gaunt. This dispatched to East Croydon and Woolwich bottling plants. I think the East Croydon tanks were worked via Willedsen Junction and Clapham Junction. I have not been able to find much info on the Woolwich workings.

Milk tank traffic at the southern end of the MML would mostly have been Express Dairies tankers as there was a large bottling plant at Cricklewood. Quite why tanks were worked to St Pancras rather than just going direct to Cricklewood is a mystery to me but it did happen.

LMS (ex-Midland Railway) 0-4-4T No 1321 on train of 'Express Dairy' tank wagons from Cricklewood at Saint Pancras, London - c.1934. © 2007 - 53A Models of Hull Collection. Scanned from the original 120 format monochrome negative; photographed by the late Alan Whitehead.