THE CITY MILK PLANT 95 



cars are commonly used. This depends upon the time 

 of year and the weather conditions. For milk cars, some 

 roads employ a modified baggage car equipped with racks 

 along the side for holding ice. A better milk car is used 

 by one of the roads carrying milk to New York City. It 

 is a refrigerator car with a capacity of 325 eight-gallon 

 cans, having an ice compartment at each end, so that milk 

 may be kept at a temperature of 50 F. Every day the 

 cars are scrubbed and thoroughly cleaned. 



Another road has refrigerator milk cars with asbestos- 

 lined walls, sheet-steel floors and regular refrigerator doors 

 and an ice capacity of 500 pounds at each end of the car. 



The careful dairyman delivers his well-cooled milk at 

 the station a short time before the arrival of the car or 

 boat, but right here is a possibility of spoiling milk. Milk 

 stations are often merely open platforms with no roof or 

 other protection for the cans from the sun and heat in sum- 

 mer. Milk will quickly warm to the danger point if left on 

 such a platform. And as delayed trains are not an unusual 

 thing, the souring of milk while in the hands of the trans- 

 portation company is not an infrequent occurrence. In 

 the older dairy districts we find milk stations with proper 

 protection for the milk while it awaits the arrival of the 

 train. 



Until very recent years, milk was brought from a dis- 

 tance by steam cars or by boat, but the electric railway is 

 now a keen competitor for the hauling of milk and has 

 some advantages over the other methods of transportation. 

 The electric lines penetrate the rural communities to a 

 greater extent than do the steam roads, so that the farmer 

 has the milk station closer to his door. The electric lines 

 can carry their loads of milk to the center of the city, or 

 to the milk plant itself, instead of dumping it all at one 



