Milk Tank Traffic on the LNER

[Greedy Boards]

Hi All

Came across a photo of a United Dairies 4 wheeled milk tank wagon taken on 13th December 1928, from the Hulton-Deutsch Collection "LNER Reflections (1992), Nigel Harris, Silver Link Publishing Ltd (Peterborough), which was taken over by the BBC and subsequently the Getty Archives.

The supporting info talks about the LNER milk tank traffic from Ingestre, Staffordshire, and ending up at the United Dairies distribution depot at Finchley, which would tie in with my previous comments. However, I do recall that milk from Ingestre also went to the Express Dairies distribution Depot at Cricklewood, whic I think that I am right in saying was LMS territory?

If so, given that Dairy tanks were carried on wagons supplied by all the Big Four, and that they would buy milk from wherever, it could be that we start to have a plot of major milk distribution depots that include Vauxhall for SR milk traffic; Cricklewood for LMS traffic; and both (East) Finchley & Ilford for LNER traffic - any other additions for the GWR?


Best wishes

Greedy Boards

[65447]

It's worth remembering that while the railway companies constructed the underframes the dairies owned the tanks and so had considerable influence over what was trafficked to and from where.

It may also be worth establishing who owned the dairies that took in and processed the milk from the local area prior to bulking up for onward transport by rail. That at Halesworth on the East Suffolk line was owned by United Dairies.

[crispy]

I worked at the UD at ilford , as did my father,and spent many hours out the back watching the goings on, i can remember seeing up trains stop with a milk tank or tanks on the back and the J86 or N7 taking it off,in fact i probably had my first "go" on a steam loco there,the driver invited me to open the regulator........well only being about 9 or 10 years old at the time i gave it an almighty heave.....we took off .......and so did the fire. Happy days
To get back to the point though,tanks arrived from all over Devon(totnes),cornwall(st erth),Uttoxeter and Carmarthen .And if you want to know the colour of the paint it's Azo orange.
Any thing else i may be able to help with give me a shout.

[Cutter]

I’m modeling Welwyn North (N gauge) and have recently been trying to figure out milk traffic there c.1930-35. In the process I have become interested in milk handling at Finsbury Park, but have been unable to ascertain the location of the Great Northern Railway Milk Station there. This had a dedicated siding and shed, into which churns were unloaded for distribution to local customers by road.
The big client there in my era was United Daries, whose pasteurizing and bottling plant was some way up the road from the station, and had no direct rail access. They were also using another dairy even further up the road (now The Old Dairy pub), and may have had other plants in the vicinity?
Presumably large quantities of milk were dispatched by road to the United Daries facilities. I suspect that as milk tank wagons came into use these were handled at the same ex-GNR milk station. I don’t know what facilities would be needed to cope with them. The only contemporary (1928) description I have found simply notes that “at the point of delivery, the milk is unloaded from the tanks at the rate of 150 gallons a minute, and speedily conveyed to the consumer by motor and horse trucks.”
All this leads me to asking to what extent milk tank wagons would have been seen on the ECML near London in the 1930s. My hunch is that they were a rare sight early in the decade but became more numerous, but I have no idea of their numbers, or indeed which daries’ tanks would have been seen. I imagine that United Daries tanks were seen en route to Finsbury park, but that other dairies tanks passed through on their way to different plants around London?

[manna]

G'day Gents

I am not 100% sure, but I think you will find that the milk unloading facility was where the 'Pullman' car sat, over by platform 10 at Finsbury Park station, the building was rebuilt and taken over by 'Mac Fisheries' later taken over by someone else, no idea who owns it now.

manna

EDIT.......I have just been on Google Earth, and looked at Finsbury Park Stn, the area where the Pullman car sat has been demolished, the siding where the Pullman sat, 'Gone, the Coal/Goods road, Gone, although the track alongside the defunct platform 10 is still there.

[Mickey]

From memory on the Down side of Finsbury Park station i vaguely recall back in the early/mid 1960s there use to be several sidings that turned off towards the left that ran over Wells Terrace overbridge where the bus station is and then ran parallel to Stroud Green Road for a few hundred yards before ending at stop blocks?. I'm not talking about the Stone Yard sidings opposite Finsbury Park 5 box the sidings that i am referring to ran parallel with Stroud Green Road and had turned off towards the left before the short Stone Yard sidings opposite Finsbury Park 5 were reached.

Mickey

[Pyewipe Junction]

I am surprised that no one has mentioned the Independent Milk Supply Co's depot at Rossmore Road, next to Marylebone.

This handled daily milk traffic from Shropshire and, I believe, Scotland, which was worked jointly by the LNER and GWR. Interestingly, the GW worked the trains as far as Banbury, where they were reversed to Woodford and then reversed again to Marylebone. The reason for this inefficient manoeuvre was apparently so that the LNER could maximise its share of the revenue. Locomotives used on the LNER stretch included D11s, L3s, B7s, J11s, C4s and even A5s. The GW used 4-4-0s and 43xxs until the Manors came into service.

The IMS facility and details of the service are dealt with comprehensively in The Great Central In LNER Days 2 by Jackson and Russell. There is a diagram of the type of tanker used. Apparently the tankers were frequently quite dirty, which makes you wonder about hygiene standards in those days!

[Cutter]

The milk station at Finsbury Park was at the northern end in the down side. The shed was moved 20' on rollers in 1911 during improvements and provided with an electric lift down to the street level "milk wharf." There was already a tunnel there (still in situ but unused) to get milk to the underground for distribution that way. I'm still gathering scraps of information!

[StevieG]

( Also posted in the 'Model Railways' / "LNER Milk Tankers" thread )

FWIW, mention has previously been made (in this or the other thread), in connection with possible milk handling, of :-
1. Finsbury Park's 'depot' platform (and also of the sidings which extended beyond, over Wells Terrace, and down into Lennox Road yard), which was adjacent to the Down side of the station : This was later used for rail traffic by MacFisheries Ltd., and later still the premises became C.I.L. Shopfitters (little if any rail traffic, though remaining rail-connected beyond the era of the 1975-76 Kings Cross-Biggleswade resignalling), with someone therein arranging for the arrival of Pullman car Doris to become for many years a static facility at the platform, which was also bedecked with other railway ephemera ; and -
2. A street-level milk handling facility of some sort in, or very close to, Wells Terrace, also on the Down side of the main line.

Also no doubt this reference ...

" .... The shed was moved 20' on rollers in 1911 during improvements and provided with an electric lift . .... "

... was in connection with the station's Down side expansion, when the Down Goods line was moved westwards, and an additional passenger line added through the station along with the addition of the new platforms 9/10 island.

Quite possibly the quoted 'electric lift' was the one I just about remember seeing, in the mid-'60s I think, at the north end of the Up Fast & Slow lines platform island (numbered 3 & 4 pre-1970s rationalisation, after which they were 1 & 2, but since recent reinstatement to public use of the former Nos.1 & 2 island, they are now again Nos. 3 & 4).
By the time I started work at FP, it had gone, but older staff spoke of the milk subway which ran across from there, westwards to the Wells Terrace side of the station, though I never learned where remaining access to it might've been - it doubtless still existed then (mid-1970s), and may even continue to do so today, hidden down below the since further extended (northwards) platforms [Nos. 3/4 now extends, full width, over and beyond Stroud Green Road underbridge to accommodate 12-car EMUs and as an emergency turnback for 'InterCity' (Virgin East Coast etc.) trains], quite possibly even covering the site of the old No.6 signal box.

I don't know whether the previously referred to milk traffic unloading at FP was all done on the Up side, or was tripped back to the FP depot platform or Down passenger platforms from KX, or both.

[Josh Hamilton]

Sorry for the old thread.. In relation to GN milk, the CWN of 1938 shows 3 LNER coaches working the 0315 from K.X to Derby, loaded with milk.
Hope that is of some use, Also following with interest with a Finsbury Park themed layout in the pipeline.

Regards,
Josh Hamilton

[1awn]

Their was an Milk Depot at Tredegar Road Stratford area their was also a milk depot on the joint at South Ruislip, this was Exprees Dairy, the Milk Depot at Ilford. All these received milk tanks off the Carlise - Mitre Bridge milk train via Bletchley, also the IMS milk tankers from Scotland were drop here before heading north to Woodford Hale. Then south to Marylebone. Hope this helps.