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GWR Route: Moreton-in-Marsh to Shipston-on-Stour

Moreton-in-Marsh Station: gwrmm987a

Close up of three empty Great Western Railway Siphons standing in Moreton-in-Marsh's creamery

Close up of three empty Great Western Railway Siphons standing in Moreton-in-Marsh's creamery. The Siphon, designated by the GWR as a carriage as early versions were constructed on recycled chassis from earlier passenger carriage designs, was an enclosed milk churn transport wagon built by the Great Western Railway and continued by British Railways. The GWR, being a railway system which served the rural and highly agricultural West of England and South Wales, had a resultant large requirement to transport milk in volume. 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 for the GWR to install hygienic washing facilities, the decision was taken to transport the milk churns. Siphons were most commonly attached to the rear of passenger trains, due to the need to quickly transport the enclosed milk from farmer to the milk processing facility in the shortest possible timescale.

The early Siphons set the key design precedents for their later larger successors:

  • All wooden body construction, keeping construction costs low and repairs simple
  • Ventilated to some extent, with additional flaps
  • Canvas roof

The most populous version was the Siphon G, which sat on a classic passenger carriage double-bogied chassis of 50 feet in length, derived from a strengthened passenger carriage variant. One hundred and thirty vehicles were built between 1913 and 1927. All survived into British Railways ownership, the first withdrawn in 1954, the last in 1962. The last version of the Siphon was classified type J and was in response to the milk companies wanted to be assure of better quality milk. They had requested chilled delivery vehicles so the GWR, having experimented with a chilled MICA van using frozen carbon dioxide (dry ice), introduced in the 1930s the Siphon J design which was a fully enclosed and chilled by dry ice milk.

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