I am getting ready to include a small dairy/creamery industry on my layout, and I have found out that the type of milk cars that I plan on using, had a stainless steel tank for bulk transport of milk, that was located in each end of the car. The center area between the tanks was left vacant, and usually reserved for milk cans filled with cream.
My question is… does anyone know how the milk was loaded into the tanks? Was a hose passed through the reefer car’s door to fill the tanks, or did they manually empty numerous milk cans into the tanks (as I was told on another forum…).
My layout era is 1948-1950, and the creameries in the area I model used such cars until 1953… any information would be appreciated.
The RMC series is a great source of info on milk cars and their operations. There are some great books available about milk cars & the industry. Join the Yahoo! groups milk car group for more free info.
The glass-lined bulk milk cars would normally be loaded with a hose snaked through an opening above the small personnel access doors on the sides of the cars. Look at the InterMountain steel Pfaudler cars and you will see it above the doors in the letter board area. Keeping the access doors closed as much as possible helped retain the temperature in the car.
Bulk milk was generally delivered to the cooling station via 40 quart milk cans and cooled. When it was ready to ship to the processing plant it was pumped into the bulk cars. They were very well insulated cars and they would only lose a few degrees of temperature from loading to emptying times no matter how long the trip.
That would make sense. Milk trains were usually in something of a hurry to get the milk to the creamery, so they would be unlikely to wait at each stop while milk was poured one container at a time into the car. Make more sense to do what they did and just load the milk containers into the car and take off !!
BTW - I thought the opening between the milk tanks was the space for the little man that popped out the side door with a milk can when you pressed the red button?? [:D]
Thanks, Roger and Thanks, Stix… for your information on milk car operation. I think the creamery in the area I plan to model probably used “cans” and may have only used a REA reefer or a baggage car to “move the milk” to the creamery.
You can’t go wrong using cans and bulk. Many dairies or processing plants received milk both ways until the end of milk train service.
Smaller farms and areas without a creamery or plant close by to store and cool the milk just sent it along in the 40qt cans. Sometimes in milk cars, sometimes in baggage cars or express cars. Whatever it took to get the milk to market was done. I even read someplace that a normal procedure on one railroad was to pick up the cans along the way in a caboose.
I used to run milk in a tanker years ago. We had like a 2 inch flexible hose that attached to a pump in the trailer back and hooked to the farmer’s holding tank.
If I remember correctly, we measured and sampled the milk checked it for problems like flies, odors and color. If it is properly mixed and everything is ok it will be a simple flip of a switch to turn on the trailer pump (extension cord off the house power) and “Pull” the milk from the tank to the trailer.
Edited: I forgot that the farmer’s own cooling tank has to have the milk within a certain range. Too hot or too cold in addition to the three things in previous paragraph; could disqualify the milk from being loaded.
Once at the Dairy the milk will be severly tested both in the lab and by noses before permission is given or not given to allow the building’s own pumps to pull the product. Bad milk can literally ruin a day’s work for an entire city if not caught in time.
When the tank was finished, it was opened up and sanitized with liquids and once that is done, it’s time to go home for the day. Usually the product is consumed in a variety of ways within 24 hours.
It was very steady work. All the milk they can get is important. Hot weather stresses the cows and they dont produce much.
It was also important because everyone from the farmer, driver and the dairy participated with State oversight inspectors all the time. The farmer gets paid literally by the number of pounds picked up that day. So whatever measurement I wrote onto that little form in the tank room was probably the most checked number anywhere.
I was a local with a assigned route in two counties seperated by days of the week for a set number of farms. I would try to be at the first farm by 6 AM and at the Dairy by noon. Home by 5 pm.
There were “Long range” tankers that brought milk in from Cumberland and beyond to Baltimore because the locals cannot get up, visit the farms then drive 100 miles+ downtown balto and make it h
Thanks, gentlemen, one and all… for the great information. Set me straight on one more thing, please… did creameries act as “dairies” and bottle milk, etc., or did they receive the product, separate milk & cream, and sent it to a bulk processor (dairy)?
As the creamery that I plan on modeling was just a small regional operation, I can’t find any reference to what milk cars they used, so I think I will just use express reefers or baggage cars to get the “milk to market”, using the “milk can” method… and a few trucks at the dock to simulate over the road delivery.
The terms “dairy” and “creamery” are pretty much the same thing in common useage, but I think technically a dairy is a place where the milk is produced - like a dairy farm - and the creamery is where the milk is taken to be processed into dairy products.
My grandfather worked for Franklin Co-op Creamery in south Minneapolis, they processed (and delivered to houses) milk, cheese, ice cream etc. pretty much everything you could make from milk. As far as I know they got the milk directly from dairy farmers, but I’m not sure if it was from rail or truck (or team) or both. At that time, everything south of Lake St. in Minneapolis (a mile or two south of the creamery) was farmland so it would be possible they got what they needed by road.