British Railway Milk Tank Wagon

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 remote dairy farms to central creameries, 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 (12,800,000 hL; 339,000,000 US gal) 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; followed by the LMS which collected from Cumbria and North Wales; the Southern particularly from the Somerset and Dorset Railway; and finally the LNER from East Anglia.

Often, the milk was delivered direct from the farmer to the local railway station in milk churns. So to remove the need for moving unprocessed milk from one container to another, and hence potential cross contamination or need to install hygienic washing facilities, the decision was taken to transport the milk churns. From the 1880s, the GWR had introduced the popular GWR Siphon series of passenger carriage chassis-based high-speed and ventilated enclosed wagons, but with volumes rising and production systems changing, the transport system had to change.

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