British railway milk trains

By 1923, the year in which almost all the railways in Great Britain were grouped into four national companies, 282 million gallons of milk were being transported annually by rail.

[1] Of this traffic the Great Western Railway, serving the rural and highly agricultural West of England and South Wales, had the largest share.

It was followed by the LMS, which collected from Cumbria and North Wales; the Southern, deriving the bulk of its traffic from the Somerset and Dorset Railway; and finally the LNER, which served East Anglia.

This resulted in the need to pull the heavy milk train with a high-powered express locomotive, in order to keep time delays to a minimum.

The Cornish train would pick up at: Lostwithiel; Totnes for Ashburton; Exeter for both Hemyock and Torrington; then direct via Tiverton Junction to Kensington.

Although both trains were only scheduled to travel once a day in either direction, the 70,000,000 imperial gallons (320,000,000 L; 84,000,000 US gal) that they shipped annually still represented 25% of the UK's total milk shipment.

Using refurbished two- and three-axle wagons, the MMB had newly manufactured 5-foot-6-inch (1.68 m) diameter aluminium milk tanks chain-anchored to the chassis.

[1] After the contract was cancelled, the MMB kept the refurbished milk tank wagons in store on their own premises to overcome any difficulties in road transport, before disposing of the entire fleet five years later.

Preserved Express Dairies three-axle Milk Tank Wagon at the Didcot Railway Centre , based on an SR chassis
Afternoon of 23 July 1949: GWR 2884 Class 2-8-0 No. 3814 (preserved on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway ) passes East Acton with the down Express Dairies Kensington Olympia to Plymouth , Devon return empties train
Afternoon of 22 August 1959: GWR Hall Class 4-6-0 No. 4941 Llangedwyn Hall hauls an empty train of 13 milk tank wagons and one Siphon G past Frome , Somerset on the Reading to Taunton line , on the return run from Express Dairies Kensington Olympia to Plymouth , Devon
Afternoon of 18 July 1964: Oliver Bulleid wartime-designed SR Q1 class 0-6-0 No. 33027 at Clapham Junction , with a train of empties from the United Dairies depot at Vauxhall . After unloading, trains would work north to Waterloo to reverse, and then return to the West Country via Salisbury . This train is taking the avoiding Waterloo to Reading Line towards Putney and Richmond
Afternoon of 26 August 1974: British Rail Class 52 Western diesel 1009 Western Invader with 6A21, the 1640 St Erth to Acton milk train, near Moorswater , Liskeard , Cornwall