Hi Guys and Gals,
I’m trying to include milk production as an industry on my layout. In the western-most section of my layout, I have a building that looks like a creamery, where local farmers would bring their milk in cans (I’m modeling 1959, so I’m thinking that in Connecticut, my locale, farmers would have still been delivering their milk in cans). The platform on the back of the building will therefore be covered with milk cans and there would also be some farmers’ trucks loaded with milk cans, again from small, local farmers. On the other side of my layout, east of my yard, I have a milk bottling company with trucks for local delivery. Here, there would be milk trucks, presumably loaded with products for local home delivery, sitting next to the platform.
One reason I’ve decided to have “2 parts” to the milk production is that I’ve read that it can be fun to have one industry in a layout’s “world” feed another business locally. Thus, I would have a reefer spotted at the “creamery” leave and then stop at the bottling company to drop off the collected “raw” milk.
I’m wondering if the creamery would have done more than just collect the “canned” milk and deliver it in reefers. Would they have pasteurized it or would that have happened at the bottling plant?
Have I got this more or less right? Anybody out there familiar with milk production?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Mondo
The Rensselaer Polytech model railroad club does quite a bit with this. However, much of their very informative website requires a small fee to access.
http://railroad.union.rpi.edu/
http://railroad.union.rpi.edu/article.php?article=259
I would search Google, Yahoo, Ask.com using the same terms. By experience, I have found a lot of answers on the 'Net concerning many subjects.
I recently bough a book about the Rutland Railroad which did a lot of milk hauling in New England. The book is The Rutland Road by Jim Shaughnessy. A well stocked libray will most probably have it. I do not model milk hauling so I have no answers. I just like the history in New England but I am quite sure you will find a lot of info on the 'Net.
Good luck.
rich
Lou Sassi’s book How to Build and Detail Model Railroad Scenes has an extensive section on the dairy industry, and how to model it. He goes over the process, the buildings, milk cars, and how they operated.
Nick
Hi Mondo, The NH forum just had a topic about creameries in CT you might want to check there.
Hmm. As an “aggie” by training, and familiar with the milk and cream industry on the Canadian East Coast (which in 1959 was similar to that in Connecticut), there are a couple of problems with your scenario that I’d like to point out.
The separation you describe - the creamery receiving milk and then sending it on to a milk bottling plant - in reality would have been very rare or non-existent. In fact, more likely would be that the milk plant would receive all the milk, bottle what it needed for fluid milk sales, then ship the excess cream over to the creamery. (A creamery, remember, is a factory that uses cream to make butter.) But even that scenario is rare - because of the considerable problems of contamination every time you move milk from on container to another, and the costs therewith, milk or cream rarely got “double handled” this way. A more likely situation would see both the creamery and the milk plant taking deliveries directly from the farmers - the big milk cans going to the milk plant, and cream, already separated on the farm, arriving at the creamery in the much smaller “cream cans”. (The skim milk that the farmers got from on-farm separation was used to feed calves or other animals.) Both plants would do their own processing and shipping.
However, you’d like an inter-plant shipment, and there are prospects for that, but they’re in the finished product - specifically, the butter from the creamery. A creamery is a specialist plant producing a lower-volume, specialist product - butter - and some did not have their own marketing and distribution systems, but marketed their products through the distribution system of a fluid milk plant. So, reefers of the finished, packaged butter could move logically from the creamery to the fluid milk plant, to be put in the same trucks that supplied the local stores with milk. If you had a cheese plant as well, they could feed into
OK, then, where do big milk tankers come in? I know I’ve seen them on the road, and I have 2 of the Intermountain Pfaudler milk tank cars. (Very nice models, incidentally.)
The single-plant scenario tells me that the milk goes right from the small farmer to bottles (in 1959) in one step, which would remove the need for any large-sized liquid tankers. Instead, we have both rail cars and trucks which hold thousands of gallons. To me, that implies a regional pickup depot of some sort.
WOW, and I thought I was the only one going this route in New England…silly me. I have done a lot of research into the milk trains and creameries in New Engalnd, and thanks to Robert Buck ( Tuckers Hobbies ) I have learned much from this man who knows more about New England trains and industries than I can ever hope to attain.
Milk trains would pick up the milk from farms all along the routes from Vermont, mainly, but also Ma, NH, ME and CT, and deliver to the Creameries. Boston was one big deliver point as well as points in CT and other major cities in NE. Some milk , as MrBeasley as mentioned, was indeed shipped in milk tankers, others, especially in the earlier years, was shipped in milk cars loaded with ice for refrigeration. These trains had priority on all rail routes for obvious reasons. The book that was mentioned in the tread reply about the Rutland RR and milk cars is excellent, I would advise you to check it out.
What I found interesting was the “milk runs”, where empty milk cars were many times consisted with passenger trains in order to get these empties back to the farmers for the next day deliveries.
Your idea is fine…deliveries from the farmers, and shipped on to the major cities for processing at plants like Whitings, or Hood, etc.
The North East had very large coop organizations in the the first half of the 20th century.
My father and I drove truck picking up milk cans at dairy farms in the early 1950’s.
One of the largest coop’s was Dairymen’s League.
Do a GOOGLE search on the Dairymen’s League. You will discover many historical writeups concerning the dairy industry during that period.
I hope this helps you out.
[wow] I don’t beliecve it everybody missed the heart of the milk industry COWS!
Without cows there would be no milk industry to model. So I say what you alredy have is great but add cows.