GWR Route: Moreton-in-Marsh to Shipston-on-Stour

Moreton-in-Marsh Station: gwrmm1000

A six-wheel milk tank wagon stands in the siding alongside the Creamery whilst in the background in the loading bay, milk churns can also be seen. The six-wheel milk tank wagon was rated for use attached to an express passenger train reflecting the need to move such traffic quickly whilst the milk was fresh. Over the bufferbeam the pipe which drained the milk can be seen controlled by the handle immediately above. Milk was loaded through the access hole at the top of the tank accessed by the ladder. Milk Tank Wagons were a common sight on Railways in the United Kingdom from the early 1930s to the late 1960s. Introduced to transport raw milk from creameries to food processing units in remote locations, British Railways Milk Trains were the last railway-based system before the mass-introduction of pasteurization and resultant industry use of road transport. Post grouping in 1923, of the 282,000,000 imperial gallons of milk transported by rail by all four national railways companies, the Great Western Railway had the largest share of milk traffic, serving the rural and highly agricultural West of England and South Wales. The LMS was the second largest transporter of milk (particularly from the Lake District and North Wales), then the Southern Railway (particularly from the Somerset and Dorset Railway), and finally the LNER from East Anglia.

From 1937 the creamery at Moreton-in-Marsh was owned by United Dairies (Wholesale) Co Ltd and the tank on this six-wheel milk tank wagon is branded with their name. The cork insulated 3,000 gallon glass lined, steel tanks were provided by the individual Dairy companies, while the six-wheel wagon underframes were built by the Railway companies. The wagon underframe in this picture is believed to have been built by the Southern Railway to their diagram 3159. These were rebuilds from earlier four-wheeled wagon underframes and retained the curved saddle fixings, which sloped the tank to aid discharge. United Dairies had wagon underframes from all the big four railway companies and the table below lists the twenty-eight built for them by the Southern Railway:

The number of white stars indicated the maximum speed at which the loaded tank wagon was entitled to operate. The following details are from the British Railways Freight Train Loads Book (dated April 1964):

Robert Ferris

back