The LNER Encyclopedia

United Dairies milk tanks were destined to the Ilford Plant from the North Elmham-Norwich-Channelsea-Ilford flow...does anyone have any photos of these trains on the Norwich-Ilford line or photos of the Bottling Plant at Ilford?

I remember the place vaguely and the smell of stale milk that use to hang in the air around the associated buildings in the bottling plant. The bottling plant stood set back from the Liverpool street-Norwich main line a few hundred yards east off the 'country end' of Ilford station opposite Ilford car sheds that were situated on the Down side of the running lines. From memory I think the bottling plant had a 2 road sidings with one road being used for 'running round' the milk tanks although I only went into the siding on a loco two or three times 40 years ago so it's a bit vague looking back.

When I was a secondman at Stratford loco during 1979 there was a job that the depot had then of taking the milk tanks from Ilford over to Clapham Junction and bringing the full milk tanks back from Clapham Junction to Ilford running via the North & West London lines through Willesden High level & Kensington Olympia. The usual loco used on that job was a Brush class 31.

The subject is reasonably well photographed in Dr Ian Allen's books, John Manns series of booklets, and Vic Mitchells line series.

I have sent you a pm as I have a reasonable collection of photos and notes which may be of interest.

Paul

I can remember short milk trains on the West London from my vantage point on the bridge I described a few years back in "A Place by the Railway" on the GW main line. To the best of my recollection they were normally tank hauled, by Fowler 2-6-2Ts and later by 2-6-4Ts, all Willesden-based. Since I never saw these on the North London I assumed, perhaps correctly, these were related to the nearby Scrubs Lane bottling plant - in which case this post has nothing to do with Mickey's other than a warning that not all milk trains on the West London were to or from Ilford. Maybe the Ilford trains were at unsocial hours. I wonder what motive power they would have had before the 31s.

Kudu