Karhedron

On 29/04/2021 at 21:30, Pete the Elaner said:

 

All this technology is possible now, but not practical yet.

How long before it is all practical too?

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.

On 03/05/2021 at 17:50, PenrithBeacon said:

I watched the video and there seemed to be a lot of Musk thingies compared to the generic others.

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.

Hello,

The good news is that mixed liveries on milk trains was fairly common. While certain milk trains were dedicated to a single dairy company (such as the Dorrington Milk which served just the Indepent Milk Supply company), the main south-west milk train always served a mix of dairies.

The first thing to work out is what was running when. The 1930s was a big time of expansion in the dairy industry but the first milk tanks did not appear in the Duchy until the opening of Lostwithiel in 1932. Here are the dates and owners of all the creameries west of Newton Abbot along with when they opened:

Penzance and St Erth did not start dispatching milk tanks until the 1940s so can be discounted for your period.

The MMB opened its Cambourne creamery in 1937 but I think it did not start dispatched milk to London in tanks until the filling sidings were laid in 1946.

Lostwithiel was opened by Nestle in 1932 but by 1940 had been taken over by Wallens Supplies. Sadly I am not sure what livery the tankers wore during this period.  This photo of Lostwithiel in 1937 shows a dark milk tanker in residence but does not give any clue as to its livery. https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW054814

At Plymouth, tanks from both Daws Dairy at Saltash and the Ambrosia factory at Lifton were added.

Totnes was opened by Daws Dairy in 1934 and taken over by Cow and Gate in 1937.

Frustratingly, details and photos from the period are few and far between. Cow and Gate had dark liveried tankers with white lettering but I am not sure of the colour. I have seen a model of a Daws Dairy milk tanker which was white with blue lettering but I have not managed to find any photos of the real thing to corroborate this. Express Dairies had no creameries west of Newton Abbot. However I have seen a photo of a single Express Dairy milk tanker  being filled at Roskear. I suspect that this would have been with milk from MMB Cambourne before the opening of dedicated sidings at Dolcoath.

I have also seen photos of Express Dairy tankers at Cow and Gate dairies. Even in the 1930s, tanks were not exclusive to single companies. At the very least, companies seem to have shipped surplus milk to other facilities that had the capacity to process it into longer lived products such as cheese and butter.

The short answer is that few of the liveries available RTR would have been seen at Newton Abbot in the 1930s. You could see the odd Express Dairy tanker but it would probably have been a bit of an interloper rather than a regular fixture. Neither CWS nor IMS operated that far west.

On 01/04/2021 at 19:49, Karhedron said:

Thanks to Arun's tip-off, I have some magazines with RNH Hardy's articles and photos arriving in the next few days. Hopefully they will provide some illumination.

Sadly the picture claiming to show the diary is mis-captioned and shows a different building at Stewarts Lane. Although the chimney of the dairy is just visible peaking over the roofline. This really is a most frustrating search.

14 minutes ago, 73c said:

Sorry , Karhedron. Looks more like the side of Feltham shed with the windows blocked out.

Well darn, that looks pretty conclusive.  Thanks for that, even if it wasn't the answer I was hoping for.

I think I have finally found a picture of the elusive dairy.

https://www.rail-online.co.uk/p245409357/h5a80539a#h5a80539a

Can anyone see anything that confirms or scuppers my suspicions? It is the right shape for the building in the aerial photo with a 2-storey centre block flanked by single-storey wings. The angular art deco architecture fits the 1930s date of construction. The black drainpipes at the 1/4 and 3/4 positions look like they are visible on the aerial photo too (unless I am squinting too hard  ). Crucially there is only a single track in front of the building and most of Stewarts Lane had 2+ tracks. The milk depot siding was one of the few single-track locations.

I am about 90% sure I have found it but would appreciate a second opinion.

10 hours ago, Oldddudders said:

Apologies to Karhedron for drift!

No worries, it is in the nature of conversations. As long as the thread is active, the better the odds that someone with more information may stumble across it.

Thanks to Arun's tip-off, I have some magazines with RNH Hardy's articles and photos arriving in the next few days. Hopefully they will provide some illumination.

18 hours ago, xm607 said:

I would probably have two in BR blue grey livery, can’t understand why they haven’t been done before in any scale.

Major manufacturers have traditionally been allergic to EMUs, fortunately RevolutioN are willing to be a bit bolder. The 313 is a great choice as it has run on so many routes (ECML, WCML, London Overground, Coastway etc).

2 hours ago, Arun Sharma said:

RNH Hardy who was shedmaster at Stewarts Lane [amongst other places] wrote a long series of illustrated articles in Steam World about 10 years ago which included details of the milk dock there. 

Thanks for that information. I would really like to track those down. I don't suppose you can remember which issues by any chance?

2 hours ago, Arun Sharma said:

The usual milk dock shunter was an engine nicknamed 'Spinky" which was a Neilson-built 0-4-0 crane tank [BR No: 31302]. Amongst its other claim to fame was that it once hauled a complete ECS Pullman set to Waterloo as no other engine was available.

I have seen a couple of pics of the crane tank on milk shunting duties.

https://picclick.co.uk/1302-Southern-Steam-Train-Railway-Photograph-Not-Original-124604877764.html#&gid=1&pid=1

Still looking for help on this one if anyone has any inspiration please

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

There was at one time a milk receiving location on the WLL near Viaduct Jcn so it sounds as if it might have been part of a plan to redevelop that?

Was that the Unigate dairy at Wood Lane? It was one of the main destinations of the WR milk trains and was refurbished in the mid 80s. IIRC Princess Diana reopened it in 1987.

On 22/03/2021 at 12:04, Nearholmer said:

I guess if you wanted to shift thousands of gallons of milk every day from Scotland to the South of France (quite why I'm not sure!), rail might still be cheaper than road now.

You probably don't even have to go that far afield. In the mid 90s, Milk Marque invested in a service called the Milkliner. The idea was to transport semi-trailers mounted on existing tiphook pocket wagons from Penrith to Cricklewood. This would have taken about 20 lorries per day off the M6/M1. In many ways, it was a spiritual successor to the old Rotanks of the 1930s.

The service got as far as prototype trials before Milk Marque was broken up by the Monopolies and Mergers commission so the idea never went into full service but there are some shots of the test train about. Normal motive power was a pair of 20s or 37s.

On 28/02/2021 at 15:23, The Stationmaster said:

Actually there were two trains of milk empties to South Wales for many years.  The morning train left Kenny at 11.55 and in the 1966-67 service it ran to Cardiff while the train leaving Kenny after 20.00 ran to whitland.  But things changed over the years thus at one time the late morning/early afternoon train ran to Whitland.   The WR milk working was fairly heftily reorganised in, I think, the early 1960s and I know that in 1968 a lot of milk trains for which Control Office cards existed never actually ran as the cards would come back to the Train Office scored through for the entire week.

Around 1964 BR and the MMB signed the "Western Agreement" which shut down milk traffic on the MR and ER and concentrated traffic into London on the WR and SR. I would expect this probably had a big effect on milk trains and their operation.

On 28/02/2021 at 15:23, The Stationmaster said:

I can't recall when the Milk Controller's post went in the London Division Control but that was about the mid- late '60s - possibly a little later.  covid aside I still regyl ularly see on e of the last WR Milk Controllers and if I remember when our lunch group gets back together (whenever that is) II'll ask him. 

Another request for a brain dump here.  

On 27/02/2021 at 12:16, roythebus1 said:

All this makes me wonder when the empty tanks were cleaned out; at the collection or delivery point? It seems they were never cleaned outside!

They were normally cleaned at both ends. After unloading in London, at minimum they were given a rinse out to remove any residue as otherwise it would go off by the time it returned to the country creamery. As one of the other posters mentioned, the tanks at Vauxhall were normally rinsed out straight on to the track which gave platform 1 a somewhat pungent aroma. By the 1970s, it had got so bad that all the ballast had to be dug out over the course of a weekend and a concrete apron installed. Of course the milk traffic ceased a few years later so it was all for naught.

This image of Vauxhall gets wheeled out regularly on these threads but is worth wheeling out again because of the wealth of detail. The 1st and 3rd tanks are in the process of being cleaned out as the manhole covers are open. I believe the thin hose with handle in the nearest tank is a steam lance which is a pretty good way to sterilise the tanks. I have not heard of any chemicals being used in the cleaning process but it is possible. The middle tanks seems to be in the process of being emptied as it has a fat hose attached to the outlet valve.

The tanks were cleaned again at the country end prior to filling. This shot of St Erth shows a washout in progress. The creamery was blessed with a concrete apron so they probably didn't have quite the same pong as they did at Vauxhall.

http://www.cornwallrailwaysociety.org.uk/uploads/7/6/8/3/7683812/3297982_orig.jpg

The short lived Chard to Stowmarket service using the refurbished MMB tankers was killed off, in part, by the lack of washout facilities at Stowmarket. This meant tanks were returned to Chard with a smelly congealed mess in the bottoms. Some poor soul then had the thankless task of going in and cleaning them out with a hose and brush.

On 05/03/2021 at 17:01, Nearholmer said:

But, as others have said, as BR got out of "fiddly" traffic, the marginal cost of this one to them must have risen sharply, which is presumably what killed it off as they sought to pass that cost on.

I think it was more a case that road hauliers were increasingly able to undercut BR as lorries increased in range and efficiency.

On 05/03/2021 at 00:11, LBRJ said:

I have "been told" ( by several people who knew stuff) that the railway lost the milk contracts because lorries formed a sort of reirrigated mobile warehouse for the milk...

More or less. It came down to a mix of cost and reliability. The MMB lost faith in BR after the 1955 ASLEF strike and was looking to take control of the distribution chain to prevent such a strike disrupting their business in future. As lorries improved, it became increasingly cheaper to transport milk by road and also feasible to do so over longer distances.

Dairies close to London switched first with places like Frome losing their rail service in the late 50s. The most distant creameries retained their trains the longest as these were the ones that retained a competitive advantage over the roads longest. By the late 70s, only Cornwall, Devon and west Wales were still dispatching milk by rail.

On 12/03/2021 at 16:57, Rods_of_Revolution said:

Were Mk1 BGs common on the milk trains that came up from Cornwall? Did the requirement for a passenger brake vehicle end along with brake vans no longer being required on Class 4/6 fitted freight trains in '69?

No, the BGs used on milk trains were almost always pre-nationalisation patterns. I have only seen a Mk1 BG on a milk train in one photo on the GER so it could happen but very rarely.

Yes, the requirement for a brake van did end in 1969 (although technically, milk trains were non passenger carrying coaching stock rather than freight trains). Brake vehicles on milk trains could occasionally be seen after this date if the loco did not have a rear cab. For example, the milk trains to Vauxhall were often shunted by the Waterloo station pilot (normally a class 09 shunter in the 1970s). Since this had no rear cab for the guard, a Stove-R was normallt attached in a echo of steam-era working.

Of course you don't have to have other stock to run the 313s with. If you want the ultimate in minimalist modelling you could go for St Albans Abbey which is just a single platform BLT. Operational interest might be a bit limited but as it is really just a cameo layout but it might be a fun little project and it wouldn't take up much space. 321s and 319s were also seen so you could run these too (just not on the scenic section at the same time  ).

22 hours ago, ash39 said:

I might be in the minority, in which case this entire post is moot, but I tend to buy models based on what else is available to go with it. I'd love to model a busy commuter station on the south ECML and a couple of First Capital Connect 313's would be perfect for this, but without a contemporary Class 91/Mk4 it is not much use.

Alternatively, model the southern end of the WCML instead. 313s on the Watford DC lines, 321s and Desiros on the semi-fast services, Pendolinos on the expresses. Or go back a bit and have a variety of AC locos with Mk3 stock and DVTs. If you model one of the DC line stations, you can have quite a short platform for the 313s while the faster trains flash by on the AC lines.

Kensal Green is a nice example and features a tunnel at the northern end to act as a scenic break.

South Hampstead

South Kenton

22 hours ago, ash39 said:

I might be in the minority, in which case this entire post is moot, but I tend to buy models based on what else is available to go with it. I'd love to model a busy commuter station on the south ECML and a couple of First Capital Connect 313's would be perfect for this, but without a contemporary Class 91/Mk4 it is not much use.

How about something based on the North London Lines? If you model something based loosely on Gospel Oak, you can have them rubbing shoulders with Sprinters on the Barking line or even 1st Gen DMUs like Dapol's 121 and Farish's 101 if you go back to NSE days. Then there is freight as well. You could make a great suburban layout with a variety of stock.

NSE for me please to go with my 321.

But I have to say that FCC livery looks very smart with the blue-fade. Shame the Class 321 was produced with a plainer version of the FCC livery without the fade effect on the blue. Still, at least my wallet can breathe a sight of relief.

Does anyone know of any photographs showing the Co-operative Wholesale Society's bottling dairy at Stewarts Lane depot please? It seems to have operated from the late 30s to the late 60s. It was on the northern edge of the depot, next to the carriage sheds and the site is now occupied by a bus depot. This map from 1951 shows the location well.

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any decent shots. The best I can mange is a very distant and blurry shot from the air in 1950. It shows a squarish industrial building with a sheltered platform on the rail side but no real detail.

The only photo from ground level I have found is a loco shunting milk tanks but it is well away from the dairy.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clapham_Stewarts_Lane_Depot_geograph-2663029-by-Ben-Brooksbank.jpg

If anyone has any photos of the dairy from ground level or knows where to find some, I would be very interested to see them.

Yes, tanks from Lifton were also added at Plymouth IIRC. 

21 hours ago, chrisf said:

Yes.  The auto is in the down platform.  The milk depot post-dates the plan and is/was approximately where the dock is. 

I believe there was never an actual milk depot at the station. Milk was loaded into road tanks and driven up the hill to Saltash station from Daws creamery which was located lower down on what is now Old Ferry Road.

The photo below shows a peak into the goods yard in the 60s with a rake of milk tankers in residence. They are just parked on the siding by loading dock with no actual building visible. I have seen a clearer shot with a tanker lorry present as well but it is not online.

https://www.transporttreasury.com/p420591422/hBA3AAA0E#hba3aaa0e

The notes I have mention that Aplin and Barrett had a dark grey livery with white lettering. Of course the only photo is B&W so we can only guess at the exact shade of grey.

The shade used by Hornby seems to roughly match the the O Gauge one for sale on eBay. In the absence of other evidence, we could argue that no one will be able to prove them wrong.