MILK RUN

[Nighttrain]

I am modeling a period late 1959, early 1960 layout.  I plan to model a mixed train, which will stop at a milk platform in the countryside.   The milk would be set out by the diary farmer in milk cans.  Perhaps nine to a dozen cans.  In the real work the pick-up point would be about 50 miles from the milk processing plant, and the mixed train would make about a dozen stops and collections along its morning route.  

QUESTIONS: (1) Was a refrigerated or insulated express or standard box car used to hold the milk cans? (2) Did the railway company employ a rider who rode inside the collection car and then stepped out to collect the full cans? (3) If no is the answer to (2) how were the cans collected?

Thanks in advance.  

Bob 

 

[dldance]

The last 'milk' run in Idaho that I am aware was actually for cream.  The dairy made sour cream butter - a product with a flavor that is much richer than the more common sweet cream butter.  The product is important because freshness of the cream did not matter.

A regular box car was set out on a track near Arco, the remote station near the end of the line.  Every day or two, the dairy farmers would bring their cream to the boxcar and load it themselves.  Once a week, UP would pick up the car, replace it with another car, and take the loaded car about 60 miles to Blackfoot, the town that the sour cream butter dairy was in.  The car would be set out on a team track.  My brother (who was in high school at the time) would take the dairy's truck to the team track and unload a truck load of cans.  After the cans were emptied and washed, he would take the clean cans back to the box car, reload the clean cans and take another load of full cans from the boxcar.  Some times it would take 2 or 3 days to empty all the cans.  Then the car would set until the next weekly milk run.

Thus, there were 2 box cars dedicated to this service that spent most of the time in use as storage.  This operation lasted until the mid-1970's when the dairy finally shut down so I am certain that operations were similar in 1960.  Also, as you can see, a can of cream could be in that unrefridgerated car for 7 to 10 days.  Like I said - it was sour cream butter.

dd

[jimrice4449]

A "milk" car would be like an ordinary express reefer w/o ice hatches or bunkers.   The farmer would keep the milk cans refrigerated until train time and the insulated car would keep them cool until delivery.  As to loading them, I would suppose the farmers would handle that or lacking that, the local frt agent or an express messenger on the train.   Some RRs had milk tank cars that looke like butter dishes on flat carsand I have no idea how they would be loaded.

[RutlandRay]

I'm reposting this - it should answer some of your questions: 

  In general, farmers bring their milk to a creamery or to a railroad milk pick-up platform.

  The creamery is often a farmers' cooperative. Milk is combined and sent to market on their milk car. Usually the car had tanks for the milk.  The milk and the car were cooled, the milk loaded and picked up by the railroad and rushed to a dairy at the market.  These cars were either owned or leased.  The Walthers 50 foot wood Pfaudler cars are of this type as well as the Roundhouse 40 foot wood cars and the Intermountain 40 foot steel Pfaudler cars.  These cars were insulated and did not have ice hatches or bunkers.  

  The milk dropped off at a railroad milk pick-up platforms were picked up by a railroad owned car.  These were usually "can cars".  The milk was shipped in the milk cans and cooled by putting ice on the cans and did not have ice hatches or bunkers. The milk was taken to market and processed at the dairy for distribution.  One "odd" operation was the Bellows Falls (VT) Cooperative Creamery where the milk was bottled and then shipped to market. Train Miniatures sold the Bellows Falls car. 

   Once the milk train was assembled it had a fast/high priority schedule to market.  The return trip for the cars was not as high priority.  Some of the empty cars were returned on freights or as part of a passenger train.   As for the Athearn and Roundhouse 50 foot cars, they have ice hatches and may be used as a lower cost "stand-in" car.

RutlandRay

[wjstix]

The milk would go 'hot from the cow' into cans that the farmer would take trackside to be picked up. IIRC the milk could go without refrigeration for 24-36 hours before it would start to go bad. Normally the milk train would be picking up milk that had been 'freshly squeezed' only a few hours before, and would be getting to the processing plant the same day, so there usually wasn't a need for refrigeration in the kind of operation you describe. Generally the whole idea was to get the milk to the dairy plant the same day so the RR didn't have to deal with icing reefers etc.

[Nighttrain]

I would like to thank those who have offered insight and explanation to my questions.  It is appreciated.  Growing up in the city and in a geographical area where a train rolling through the countryside to pick up cans of milk didn’t exist left me with no idea of how the railroad handled milk direct from the cow.  It would appear, from the answers, an un-insulated box car would have been the practical choice.  I can’t imagine the farmer waiting around for the train to collect the cans and drop off the empties, so I imagine a freight agent or railway worker rode in the box car and handled those chores.  And that must have made for a lot of aching muscles at the end of the day. 

 <>
As a side note, the model is a Creative Model Associates HO scale milk station with cans.  It is a nice plastic kit for less than ten dollars. 

Never let your rails rust……

[rayw46]

To answer question #2, haven't you ever seen one of those Lionel vibrating milk loading platforms?  Hey, Lionel had to get their idea from somewhere and we're told there's a prototype for everything.

[Midnight Railroader]

To answer question #2, haven't you ever seen one of those Lionel vibrating milk loading platforms?  Hey, Lionel had to get their idea from somewhere and we're told there's a prototype for everything.

Yeah, but if he was based on a real worker, the guy must have been drunk, because the Lionel man threw the cans everywhere and usually on thier sides!

[wjstix]

Plus it would get pretty cold in that white reefer!!

Kalmbach has a book on industries you can use on your model railroad (actually two books now) that you can pick up at the LHS, one of them covers milk/dairy industry. 

[Newyorkcentralfan]

I am modeling a period late 1959, early 1960 layout. I plan to model a mixed train, which will stop at a milk platform in the countryside.

The milk would be set out by the diary farmer in milk cans. Perhaps nine to a dozen cans. In the real work the pick-up point would be

about 50 miles from the milk processing plant, and the mixed train would make about a dozen stops and collections along its morning route.

Just so you know, by 1959-1960 milk trains had largely, if not totally, been replaced by trucks. So you're modeling an anacronism.

QUESTIONS: (1) Was a refrigerated or insulated express or standard box car used to hold the milk cans?

Milk reefers, which look like express reefers without roof hatches were used. The ice was packed around the cans in the car for cans. Late in the milk

game they had large insulated bulk tanks in the car.

(2) Did the railway company employ a rider who rode inside the collection car and then stepped out to collect the full cans?

Milk trains had a rider car, an older coach or a combine, attached to the train.

(3) If no is the answer to (2) how were the cans collected?

The cars would be loaded by an employee(s) who manhandled the cans into the car. In the later years the milk would be pumped into the bulk tank and the cans left.

 

 

[Anonymous]

Bob,   Not sure how it worked but in 1958 when I entered the service I rode the PRR to Indianapolis and then the L&N to Louisville.  The L&N was a milk run, or should I say a very slow walk. It never went fast and would stop every so often to pick up those milk cans you mentioned. From what I saw there had to be someone riding because they seemed to be place out by the tracks and no buildings near nor did I see any farmer or other persons.   Some things one just doesn't forget.

[dknelson]

Anyone interested in milk and milk trains should get the fairly recent Jeff Wilson/Kalmbach book Industries Along the Tracks 2.  It has an entire chapter with lots of great old photos on milk trains, milk cars, loading platforms, creameries, and the like.d  The rest of the book is worthwhile too -- the Kalmbach photo archives are obviously second to none.

 http://kalmbachcatalog.stores.yahoo.net/12409.html

Dave Nelson