Karhedron

OK, so the 1950s WTTs definitely show milk from Appleby working south to Cricklewood while we have evidence from the 1960s of the milk being worked north to Carlisle and then down the WCML. So, was there some kind of switch over circa 1960? Or did both flows co-exist? Cricklewood was best accessed from the MML but Express Dairies also had a major bottling plant at South Acton. This would be most easily accessed from the WCML. A train coming off at Mitre Bridge junction could drop off tanks at the UD depot and then simply carry on to South Acton with the rest of the tanks. We have some pieces of the puzzle but we are a long way from the full picture.

I only have a couple of photos of milk trains on the S&C and both are southbound. One is from the mid 50s and features an 8F on a long tank train with an LMS Stove-R about half way back providing Guard's accomodation. The second is at Appleby in 1965 with an Ivatt 4MT Mogul shunting the creamery. 4 tanks are on the mainline, 2 are in the creamery and one is being shunted. No brake vehicle is visible. I have heard it was common practice to leave the brake vehicle at the station which was just the other side of the bridge while shunting the creamery but I don't know for sure in this instance. Both trains are southbound so would be heading heading down the S&C. Whether they are fulls or empties is not clear from the photos but it does show that traffic regularly ran south. Whether any ran northwards to Carlise I cannot say.

Carlisle certainly was a major concentration point for milk traffic heading south along the WCML. I only have the 1954 WTT to hand so it is possible that milk from Appleby did run via Carlise at other times. I know that milk train timetables did evolve somewhat over the years. One thing to consider is that Appleby was an Express Dairy and so milk from there would have been heading for Cricklewood and South Acton. This would have made it convenient to run along the S&C and then the MML, picking up tanks from other EDs along the way like Leyburn and Rowsley en-route. The WCML milk train was mainly tanks for United Dairies at Willesden (Mitre Bridge) and Wood Lane. This would have picked up from other UD creameries along the way such as Calveley, Whitchurch and Ellesmere. Obviously dairies were not all neatly grouped by route so there was still a fair amount of tripping around London to be done. Many milk trains eventually wound up at Kensington Olympia where the tanks were remarshalled and tripped to the various bottling plants around the Capital. This became more significant after the implementation of the "Western Agreement" in the mid 60s which concentrated milk flows into London on the WR and SR. Milk traffic on the MR and ER largely dried up after this time but bottling plants on their networks like Ilford still needed serving. One day I would like to sit down with a big archive of WTTs and work exactly what tanks went where and when. Sadly I don't expect to have time to do this anytime soon. I have pieces of the jigsaw that I have pieced together over the years but I am a long way from the full picture.

Sadly the Ipswich shot is the only one of the batch showing the milk tanks in active service on the short-lived Chard - Stowmarket service. After this service stopped, the MMB kept them stationed at various creameries in case of emergency for some years until they were scrapped. There is an interesting page on the subject here. http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/chard-juntion.html

OK, that is not so good but at least in warmer weather that will not be a problem. I don't have a separate workspace, I just perch at the kitchen table. While my electricity and heating bill has gone up slightly, the drop in my petrol costs was more significant. But you do make a very good point that the carbon impact of a particular change may vary depending on circumstances. I was seriously looking at replacing the small hatchback I use to commute with a BEV but with the reduced mileage, the economics are no longer so favourable. I think it will be more economical to drive it until it falls apart and then look to replace the large family car with a BEV instead. But making long term plans when things are in such a state of flux is probably not a wise decision.

May I ask the source of your 18% figure please? Most of the studies I have read show that BEVs have a significantly reduced carbon footprint compared to ICEs. The study below is interesting as it shows some interesting points. https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-how-electric-vehicles-help-to-tackle-climate-change A BEV will "pay back" the increased carbon footprint of manufacture after about 4 years of average use. The lifetime carbon footprint of a BEV is about 50% less than an ICE in the EU based on current engines and electricity generation. The big thing here is that most countries have plans to significantly decarbonise their electricity generation over the next 10 years. Renewable generation accounted for 47% of the UK's electricity supply in 2020, up from 37% in 2019. That may be slightly exaggerated as 2020 was quite sunny and windy but it shows that the lifetime carbon footprint of BEVs should fall further as more renewable generation comes on stream. The other factor to take into account is that those figures are based on a lifetime mileage of 150,000 km. This is actually probably an underestimate for both ICEs and BEVs. My last car had 180,000 miles (290,000 km) on the clock when it finally gave up the ghost. But BEVs are projected to have significantly longer lifespans than ICEs due to having far fewer moving parts to wear out. If this proves to be the case in real use then the figures for BEVs look even better as the greater embedded carbon is diluted over a greater mileage, reducing the carbon-per-mile. I do agree what we could do with something better though. Since the pandemic, I have switched from working mostly in the office to only going in 1 day per week. At the moment we are a 2-car family as we have 3 kids, each with assorted after-school activities. But if I can continue to work mainly from home then 1 car may suffice in the future which would save a significant amount of embedded carbon as well as the saving I have already made by driving fewer miles in my current car.

By comparison, the same turbine could charge 100 cars in 24 hours assuming the turbine was operating at maximum capacity.

Well it does because you lose energy every time you convert it to a different form. If your wind turbine generates hydrogen to drive a car 100 miles, the same amount of electricity could drive a car 200 miles if used to recharge the battery directly. On a small scale, hydrogen is easier to store. With a large, smart grid, that may not be such an issue.

Sounds like a great plan. N Gauge is ideally suited to "watching trains go by". The Kato 800 is a really nice looking train and the good news is that it tends to run along lines where other modern image express and cross country trains can be seen running. Both the GWRML and ECML have HSTs. The ECML also has the 91+Mk4 sets. You can probably find locations with 158s, turbostars and the like. Doing something a bit different is a great way to get your creative juices flowing again.

Only the first few batches of milk tanks were built as 4-wheelers. They road very roughly at the express passenger speeds they were expected to operate at so 6-wheelers were introduced soon after. You are correct that the 4-wheelers were rebuilt as 6-wheelers but most milk tanks were built with 6 wheels from new.

I am a bit late to the discussion but here is another 3-star tanker. These LNER road/rail tanks were originally built for fish oil traffic from Aberdeen. I gather they ended up being used for milk traffic too. I wonder if that was the inspiration behind Omega-3 enriched milk?

The following might be of interest. It is a promotional film produced by the Express Dairy company in the mid 50s. It features a short sequence at the then-new Morden depot showing the ED shunter moving milk tanks about. The railway bit starts around 7:50. https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-daily-round-the-story-of-milk-production-and-distribution-1954-online

The best place for WTTs is the British Rail Coaching Stock IO group. https://brcoachingstock.groups.io/ Some files are available there but the various members have others in their own collections and are normally happy to share when asked.

Express Dairies had definitely started introducing silver tanks by 1954 so they would be fine by 55. The 1954 WTT shows the milk from the S&C running via Sheffield. The train left Carlisle at 17:47 and reached Appleby at 18:32. It then had 20 minutes to pick up tanks. The next stop shown is Sheffield at 23:51 but I am not sure which route it took. At Sheffield it picked up the tanks from the Express Dairy at Leyburn and the Cow and Gate dairy at Northallerton. Then the whole lot headed south, reaching Cricklewood at 04:10. Curiously, the WTT shows the Sunday milk train running via Leeds. Perhaps this means the Weekday and Saturday trains did NOT run via Leeds.

Longer than it took to fill a normal rail tank in a siding but less than it took to manhandle the equivalent number of churns onto a lorry and then carry them to a van at the station end. Rotanks were a compromise solution allowing churn traffic to be eliminated without the expense of building new dairies with direct rail connections. The principle lasted nearly 30 years. By the early 60s, Rotanks fell out of use as traffic was increasingly concentrated at the large rail-served dairies which could dispatch multiple tanks per day. The creameries that had used Rotanks either switched to lorry to take the milk directly to the bottling plants or simply closed down.

You are right. In fact I think that the CWS was the single largest user of Rotanks as they seemed to have quite a number of facilities located away from railheads. Here is one of the original 3 solid-tyred rotanks being loaded onto its MTT at Cole on the S&D. For comparison, here is a SR United Dairies Rotank built just a year or so later with pneumatic tyres and a 6-wheeled MTT. The GWR design for the CWS were very similar to the one below.

Agreed. The NSE flash on the door looks about the right size too which I know was mentioned as a concern earlier. Personally I prefer the curved upsweep but it is not a deal breaker and the livery version Farish have produced does look right for how the first batch of units appeared when new.

The Great Western Society came to my rescue. Apparently 2501-03 of lot 1485 to diagram O37 were built for United Dairies. Thanks for sharing the details from Russell. The photo of 2501 being loaded with a plain steel tanker is interesting. I wonder what the story is there. I think you are probably right that fig 156 shows two of the tankers from lot 1485 so I guess they must have been painted later on.

Sorry to resurrect this thread, I must have missed it 4 years ago. As far as I have been able to make out, the mid-60s were towards the end of milk traffic on the S&C. In 1964, the MMB and BR signed the "Western Agreement". This concentrated fresh milk flows into London from South Wales and the West Country. Long established milk trains from places like Cumbria, East Anglia and North Staffordshire were wound up over the following few years. Appleby may have been an exception. Some dairies retained their rail links to receive incoming milk for processing. Excess summer production would be turned into cheese, powdered milk, butter etc. There was a regular flow from Swindon to Carlisle of this excess production every summer in the late 70s with 1980 being the final year of operation. I don't know exactly which dairies were involved but Appleby and Aspatria were both big producers of cheese so may have continued to receive milk at this time rather than dispatching it. As for livery, Appleby was an Express Dairy facility so originally would have had their dark blue milk tankers with white lettering which Dapol offer in N Gauge. By the 60s, most milk tanks had been refurbished. This involved replacing the original cork insulation with mineral wool and the steel cladding with aluminium. This is why most milk tanks in BR days appeared dull silver. The aluminium was often left unpainted since it didn't rust. Dapol also offer this livery and it would have been in the majority by the mid 1960s. However I have seen shots of tankers still wearing tatty Express dark blue in 1965 so you could justifiably mix and match. HMRS has a couple of shots of Express Dairies tanks in the 60s to give you an idea. https://hmrs.org.uk/photographs/express-dairy-acton-6-wheel-milk-tank-b3183-dia-o-64.html https://hmrs.org.uk/photographs/express-dairy-acton-6-wheel-milk-tank-b3183-at-totnes-r3l-diag-o-64.html Just beware, Dapol also produce tankers in a light blue Express dairies livery with a "swoosh" E. I am pretty sure this is livery was only applied to their road tankers. I have never seen a photo of a rail tanker wearing it.

Please can someone help as I don't have a copy of Russell to hand? During the 1930s and 40s, the GWR built around 35 road/rail milk tanks or "Rotanks" for dairy traffic. The details I have suggest that these for built for the Co-operative Wholesale Society but I have found a photo from 1935 of a GWR Rotank in United Diaries livery. This means my list is either wrong or incomplete. Please can anyone tell me if any members of diagrams O37, O48, O49 were built for United Dairies?

I will be interested in a copy when it comes out.

I don't suppose you are still in touch? I wouldn't mind a flip through his photo album. Particularly rail-served dairies which gives the best of both worlds.

Churn traffic was pretty much extinct by the 1960s so I doubt there would have been much left in 1963. Also Torrington was a pretty modern dairy as it had a major rebuild after WW2 so churns would have been unlikely. Thirdly, the Torridge Vale dairy was located about a mile away from the station. Milk was driven down to the station in tanker lorries and loaded in the old goods shed which was converted into a filling point. Churns would have been twice as unweidly as at dairies with a direct rail connection as they would have had to be driven to the station, unloaded from the lorry and then loaded into the vans, all while warming. The passenger brake vans in milk trains were almost exclusively for the Guard by the 1960s.

Probably not to long. My guess is it will start off in controlled environments where staff can be trained the risk to random Joe Public is elimated. Once debugged, it will start to migrate out into the wider world.

Tesla seems to the iPhone of the EV world. They are definitely not the cheapest but they look good and just work. Just like it took Androids a while to catch up, it will take other EV brands a while to reach the same level of mass market appeal.